Calling Home to Haiti
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- Pictures of missing loved ones on a board at the Haitian Relief Information Center/ Ruth Morris
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Gracia Desille is 57, a grandmother and a dry cleaner. After Haiti’s earthquake, she became one of thousands of Haitian-Americans in South Florida desperately searching for news about their families back home.
“I try try… call. I buy (phone) cards. I buy cards. So many cards…” she told me. “Nobody answers.”
After a week of no news, Desille heard about the Haitian Relief Information Center. Comcast had set up a phone bank and was offering free calls to Haiti. She arrived with three numbers scrawled on the back of an envelope, and took her place on a plastic chair with others who clutched small address books with dog-eared pages.
We follow Desille’s story until she finally learns the fate of her family, and we visit an unsung hero: a Creole-language DJ who opened his radio booth to anyone with a scrap of news to share.
You can also click here to listen to community organizer Marleine Bastien– who is also a social worker– as she discusses “helping and hurting.”
Related Links
Miami Herald: New Tech Tools Help Haiti Quake Relief
Tags: audio, Earthquake, Haiti, Little Haiti
The earthquake has touched me in 3 different ways.
My older brother is a photographer and he is working in haiti, He got there two days after the earthquake. I haven’t had the chance to speak with him, family and some friends had. All picture i have from him in this situation is a message that he left on my cellphone, with a rough, lost and tired tone of voice saying: “i’m fine, tell mom everything is cool here”
On the other side my sister a doctor and due to all that happened we are looking forward to offer her help and expertise and voluntarily go to haiti, she is really willing to.
I’ve checked on all the organizations in my country that are moving people to haiti, and the selection process is based in how famous you wanna be, and how much are you willing to afford or give up for that.
Every since in my family when my two brothers decided their ways there have been always a dream, almost a fantasy, of them meeting up in the field.
And on the third and the most awful side that sorrounds me: i work in a call center that is part of a multi-national american company that, among others, joined the MTV’s, iniciative of doing a festival and we are giving phone support with the donations. In my country due to the time differences it will start at 11Pm on a friday. As you can imagine, or if you don’t, outsourcing companies mostly hire young people because we are really flexible with the shifts and is easier to adjust us to their needs. Right now i’m coordinating the staffing for tomorrow, and i’m sincerely dissapointed and worried with the answers i got. ” The US are taking over already, they will take care of it”, “i’m not giving up on going to a bar for a country i will never visit”.
Bottom-line, it is true that disasters or stressful conditions take the worse of the people out, and sometimes is not necesary to be there to see it.
PAncho.- 20.
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