When Regine Zamor landed in Haiti on Thursday afternoon, January 14 — less than two days after the worst earthquake in 200 years rocked the tiny island nation — she was shocked by the devastation she saw in her beloved homeland. Men, women, children and babies were trapped in buildings and homes that had crumbled into the streets, yelling for help and hoping someone would hear them. Mothers did their best to comfort crying children as tremors rocked the earth there once more. Food and water were scarce. The power was out, and there was no way to phone anyone at that moment.
But what Zamor also saw that day, and in the weeks since, was the indomitable spirit of the Haitian people, who she says are doing everything they can to rebuild their broken country. “You see people everywhere trying to help each other out,” says Zamor, a 29-year-old Haitian-American from Brooklyn, who jetted to Haiti to do whatever she can to help people get food, water and medical treatment — just because she wanted to help.
“I saw people pulling their neighbors out of the rubble,” she tells Tonic via phone from Haiti. “It was the Haitian community that did that. A principal told me that he and the community pulled their students out of their own school, Lycee Carrefour Feuilles. People are banding together. People are not crying. They are calm. They are loving. They are carrying on. Wounded or not, they are working around the clock to have a decent, dignified life.”
In the weeks since that fateful day, Louis Elneus has received scores of calls and emails from people wanting to donate funds and volunteer with his Haitian-based children’s charity, Haiti Lumiere de Demain, which is donating solar-powered flashlights to earthquake victims and plans to plant trees on the now-barren Haitian landscape.
Like so many others, he is grieving for Haiti. More than 150,000 people have been reported dead and thousands of others are believed to be trapped inside the rubble. But what has given him, Zamor and others hope is the unbelievable outpouring of support from people from all over the world — including Tonic readers — who rallied to help the people of Haiti in the days and weeks since the quake rocked the impoverished nation. “I am humbled and honored that people opened up their hearts to literally receive Haiti in its arms,” he says.
In Tonic’s Jan. 13 story on the Haiti earthquake, Elneus had said, “I believe this is God’s way of saying to the world, ‘I want to see your humanity.’” After seeing the unbelievable support for Haiti ever since, Elneus says, “People answered God’s call. God is now saying, ‘You have shown me your humanity.’ Now he’s asking the leaders in Haiti, ‘What are you going to do with all you’ve been given? Are you going to do nothing or are you going to make Haiti a more hopeful place for its children? There’s no reason to have so much suffering there.’”
Answering a call for help
As a result of the Jan. 13 Tonic story, Elneus says a team of doctors and nurses from Cornell University Medical School contacted him, saying they want to travel with him to Haiti to provide people there — and on the Island of La Gonave, where his charity is centered — much-needed medical treatment. “A man named Douglas Groves emailed me just after the quake, saying, ‘While reading the news about the devastation in Haiti after the earthquake, I came across a link for your site offering people a chance to contact you about volunteering in Haiti. I think that [you were] right when [you] said, “As a person of faith, I believe this is God’s way of saying to the world, ‘I want to see your humanity. Where is it?’” I want to show Him my humanity. I want to do something in my life that means something,” says Elneus.
Groves offered to travel with him to Haiti, ending the email with a quote from Sir Winston Churchill, saying, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
He’s not the only one to reach out to Elneus. “More than 30 people have volunteered to go with me to Haiti,” he says. “People have set up web pages to raise money for HLD and Haiti. It is wonderful to see so much good in the world.”
Offerings of Hope
Indeed, the people of the world — famous and not famous — rallied for Haiti. George Clooney, Haitian native Wyclef Jean and MTV shattered records with the star-studded “Hope for Haiti Now” telethon on Jan. 22 that raised a whopping $66 million so far for Haiti. Superstars including Madonna, Bono, Justin Timberlake, Rihanna, Mary J. Blige, Sting, Beyonce, Coldplay, Christina Aguilera, Keith Urban, Taylor Swift and a host of others sang for Haiti. The “Hope for Haiti Now” charity album from the telethon also made history this week when it became the first digital-only album to ever top the charts, according to Billboard.
Hope for Haiti Now will accept donations for the next six months, with proceeds split between Oxfam America, Partners in Health, the Red Cross, UNICEF, United Nations World Food Programme, Yele Haiti Foundation, and the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund — entirely for earthquake relief.
On a smaller scale, nightlife guru and event producer Unik Ernest of Lokee Worldwide Productions, whose Edeyo Foundation built a school for 300 students in Port-Au-Prince in 2007 and provides meals for students, held a star-studded fundraiser for earthquake victims at the Beverly Hills home of his friend, billionaire Ron Burkle, on January 17. Lindsay Lohan, Busta Rhymes, Jeremy Piven, Anthony Kiedes, and Flea were among the celebrities who attended the $1,000 per person event.
“It was an amazing night,” says Ernest, who adds that he has been in deep despair since the night of the quake. That night, he tried in vain to find out whether his mom was alright. “She is fine, thank God. But 50 to 100 children from the school I built are missing. The school was destroyed. I’ve been numb for the past two weeks. I’m in shock.”
He plans to use the more than $120,000 raised at the fundraiser to rebuild that school in Haiti and continue to provide meals to students. “God saved me and my brother and brought me to this country, which has been so good to me,” he tells Tonic. “I want to give back to Haiti.”
“Haiti is in tatters,” he adds. “Hundreds of school of children are still missing and many teachers are feared dead.” Edeyo is planning on opening a medical clinic in the old school in Bel Air in Port-au-Prince to treat the children. In the long run, the foundation plans to house the teachers and children with the aid of Habiquad. For every 50 homes they build, Habiquad will build five for free.
Housing is imperative but education is key and paramount to Edeyo’s mission, he says: “Through education, the Edeyo Foundation plans to rebuild not just the infrastructure of Haiti, but to prepare the next generation to be the building blocks of their own future.”
Mark Wahlberg, who co-hosted the event, told partygoers that night that he would do whatever he could to help rebuild Haiti and the school Ernest built in Port-au-Prince. ”He is a great friend,” says Ernest. “I was so down when I got to LA. He invited me to his house to cheer me up and try to make me laugh.”
Wahlberg isn’t the only one helping. Britney Spears is doing her part to help Haiti by auctioning off one of the silver dresses she wore to in 2008 during her comeback performance at the MTV Video Music Awards. Lady Gaga announced during her Jan. 26 performance at Purdue University that her fans — aka her “little monsters” — raised $500,000 for Haiti. She had Tweeted over the weekend that she was selling Lady Gaga Haiti t-shirts, with proceeds going to help Haiti. She also says she is donating proceeds from her final show at Radio City Music Hall in New York City on Jan. 24 to the relief effort.
Jennifer Aniston gave $500,000 to Doctors Without Borders, Partners in Health and AmeriCares, according to E!Online. Clooney, Sandra Bullock, Leonard DiCaprio, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have donated $1 million each to the Haitian relief effort. Gisele Bundchen donated $1.5 million to the cause. Madonna donated $250,000.
Stars aren’t the only ones helping out. Football, soccer, baseball, gymnastic and swim teams, brownie and cub scout troops, churches and schools all over the world have stepped up. When fourth graders at Booth Hill School in Trumbull, Connecticut, learned about what had happened in Haiti, they pulled together a fundraiser in one day, raising $1,197.35 that they donated to the American Red Cross. “The kids came in with money they had gotten out of their piggy banks,” says fourth grade teacher Cheryl Pontonio, who helped organize the drive. “They really wanted to help. I’m so proud of them. As teachers, it was hard to see how many children were affected, so we had to do something to help.”
University of Indiana grad school student Amy Carol Wolff is asking choirs to come forward to sing for Haiti, calling upon choirs all over the world to raise money by recording “A Brighter Way,” an inspirational song she wrote this summer “that’s a call to action for all of us to rise up and serve and bring hope to those who need it in the form of changeable action.”
Video recordings of the song are due by Feb. 10. (Instructions for uploading will be available on zyozy.org.) All the choirs’ vocals and videos will be combined into one video that will air on Feb. 14 all over the internet on social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube, and she’s currently looking for a TV network to air the video.
“This is a chance for choirs to do what they do well — using their voices to sing on behalf of those who cannot be heard right now,” she says. “The image of choirs from all over the world coming together to sing for Haiti will be absolutely transformative.” Her goal is to raise $30,000 and “hopefully more!” she says. “I want anyone who is inspired by the work we’re doing to contribute to the Care Earthquake Relief Fund.”
And Zamor, who just produced a film about the tough life Haitian street kids face, called Strange Things, or “Bagay Dwol” in Creole, is donating proceeds from the film to local charities that have been working in Haiti for years and were helping people immediately after the quake, including SOIL and GHESKIO. She is also chronicling her travels on her blog.
More Needs to Be Done
Besides traveling to Haiti with the team of doctors from Cornell, Elneus is trying to raise enough funds to donate 10,000 solar-powered flashlights to all of Haiti. “So far, we have donations for 200,” he says. “We have a long way to go. But I am hopeful that we will meet that goal.”
In exchange for the flashlights, people must agree to plant and care for a tree. “This will help the environment in Haiti,” he says. “I hope to build a series of parks that will remind people of how generous people around the world were. It would be a thank you for the world’s generosity.”
Aid is reaching some, but not all of Haiti, says Zamor. “There are a lot of areas where people still aren’t getting food, water and medical supplies,” she says. “There are a lot of people who haven’t been reached, especially in areas like Carrefour Feuilles,” one of the most devastated areas at the earthquake’s epicenter.
Since she knows so many people in Haiti — she has family and friends there, and spent last summer helping with outreach programs in the country — she has been acting as an on-the-spot coordinator, getting food, water and doctors to people who need them, especially in hard-to-reach areas. “There was an old guy in the hills who needed food and water. He said, ‘Could you help us?’ So I sent someone there to help. I visited 55 kids at an orphanage. They had been seen by doctors but needed food. So we went back with 55 bags of food for them. There were twin boys born just after the quake. They are healthy but if they don’t get aid and aren’t getting food or water, they can only stay healthy for so long.”
She also offers an ear to those who need to talk about what they’ve been through. “I spoke to one guy who told me how the earth shook from side to side and how scary that was. People are still traumatized by the quakes. We need social workers and therapists here to talk to people. Everyone sleeps in the streets because there are still tremors. Everyone, everywhere. Not just in the capital but in the hills, too. No one wants to go inside. I sleep in the driveway of a hotel with everyone every night.”
And still, the Haitian people show their unwavering spirit and hope, she adds: “At night, you can hear people singing and chanting. You can hear kids singing.”
She herself has shown that same unwavering spirit. She flew to Haiti just after the quake, she says, “because it was a call home. I cried when I was back in New York City, but once I got here, I wasn’t crying. There’s so much work to be done.”
Stories of Hope
Wolff is raising money through her choir project in honor of her friend, Dawn Williams, who was feared dead when the apartment building she lives in with her family collapsed during the earthquake. Wolff was shaken on January 12 when she got a call that Dawn, one of her closest family friends, as well as her friend’s mother and little sister, were missing and feared dead in the Haitian earthquake.
“My heart was broken,” the 24-year-old Connecticut resident tells Tonic. “I was in shock and horrified. I’ve known Dawn since she was a little girl. Our families are very close. This was the first time that I fully realized how, in an instant, life can change.”
That night, her friend Dawns’ father, Frank Williams, one of the directors of World Vision in Haiti, had called her family in Connecticut to tell them that the apartment building in Port-au-Prince where he and his family lived had collapsed — with his wife and two young daughters, Dawn, 13, and Pria, 6 trapped inside.
Her parents listened as Williams told them about the horror of searching for them that night in the dark, peering into piles of crushed concrete with a flashlight and calling their names over and over hoping to find them — to no avail. He and his son, Trevor, were devastated that they couldn’t find them. “It was very hard for him to even tell them what had happened,” Wolff recalls. “He could barely get the words out.”
The next day, they found them — miraculously — “rattled and injured, but alive,” says Wolff. “I was so happy that they were OK.”
In a Jan. 24 email to friends, June Williams wrote in detail about what it was like to survive the earthquake:
“There was a loud, deep rumble and the earth shook and shifted. It seemed to go on forever. As it continued it was like walls of ice crashing against each other in the Arctic Sea —smashing, breaking apart and falling away. I couldn’t move my feet; I could only throw the girls down under me and under the archway. Five stories of concrete and tile came down on us. I thought our legs would be crushed but our upper bodies might survive. My head was hit so many times. I looked at my hands that were covering the girls’ heads. My hands couldn’t protect them from anything. Yet, we were not crushed. Five foot ceiling slabs came down. Our heads were embedded with concrete, except for Dawn’s. She’s the only one in our family with thick hair! Breathing was difficult. The living room set was thrown against me, and the furniture became kindling as it hit my legs. I saw Dawn’s left hand sticking out from under her. It still looked beautiful. How could this be? It was an absolute miracle. I’ve determined that there must have been a great big, strong angel standing over us, and smaller pieces of rubble were being sifted through his wings and landed on us.
“They said the 7.0 quake lasted 30 seconds. I said, ‘No, no, no’ the whole time. Maybe I thought I could stop it. When the first quake ended I said, ‘Go, go, go. I threw the girls towards the opening in the outer wall. Pria and I had lost our shoes. Dawn had hers. Our floor had sunk. Pipes burst. I ran through sewage and glass from the broken windows and sliding doors. Yet, I have almost no scrapes on the bottoms of my feet.
“We ran and jumped over a wall that Trevor later said was impossible to do and still be alive. I found a box in the woods and put it on one foot. My feet hurt so much and were so bruised. A second tremor brought down the rest of the building, and the rubble tumbled toward the wall we had just jumped over. Afraid that the wall would bust open I said, ‘We have to go up. We can’t outrun it.’ We were on a small mountain side. So Dawn said, ‘Tree.’ She threw Pria and me up and had no energy left to get herself in the tree. Her brother and others enjoyed teasing her about being buff, so I said, ‘If you’re as buff as they say you are, prove it!’ and she did. Dawn gets the buff award for the year.
“We put our heads against the strongest tree limbs, so concrete and rock would hit the limbs and not our heads. We prayed and told each other how much we loved each other. Fortunately it sounded familiar instead of surreal like everything else around us, because we tell each other often how much we care.”
A Canadian man helped them down from the tree and took them to his house, where they camped out in the driveway. She washed Pria’s eyes out with a first aid kit the Canadian man and his wife had given them. She says of that night, “I shook uncontrollably as we all lay under the stars. The tremors continued. I didn’t know what was me and what was the earth shaking. Buildings continued to tumble down through the night. The screams and sobs continued. Pria slept. Dawn listened but anchored her thoughts on hope. I saw in the sky seven bright stars (The Seven Sisters?) and took it as a sign that the seven of us were still alive: Frank, Trevor, Mike, Angie, and the three of us.”
Elneus says he is encouraged by such stories of survival, and stories of survivors being found in the rubble — including that of 17-year-old Darlene Etienne, who was found alive but severely dehydrated in a collapsed home after being buried for 15 days.
“Look at the case of Ena Zizi,” says Elneus, “a 72-year-old woman who spent eight days under tons and tons of rubble. She found the courage to say, ‘I am going to survive and tell people my feet hurt and that I am thirsty.’ Eight days under the rubble without a drop of water or a scrap of food, and she lived.”
“Haiti,” Elneus says, “has to build a new, stronger Haiti on her courageous shoulders.”
Click here for more of Tonic’s ongoing Haiti coverage.
Candle photo by r-z via Flickr
UN Workers photo by United Nations Development Programme via Flickr
Haiti recovery photos by United Nations Photo via Flickr
Boys in Haiti photo by IFRC via Flickr