In Haiti, close relation between the living and the dead

LES CAYES – Haiti’s unusually adjacent narration betwixt the surviving and the dormant has helped hide, successful part, the immense toll of Saturday’s earthquake: People successful Haiti privation to beryllium adjacent to their deceased relatives, to the constituent of sometimes burying them successful their beforehand yards.

Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency puts the fig of dormant from the quake astatine astir 2,200. Questions had arisen astir however specified a ample fig of dormant could person been handled oregon buried truthful quickly, but amateur burials and overflowing backstage ceremonial parlors whitethorn explicate wherever each the bodies went.

The magnitude 7.2 earthquake injured much than 12,000 people, destroyed oregon damaged much than 100,000 homes and near astir 30,000 families homeless, officials said. Schools, offices and churches — and adjacent ceremonial homes and cemeteries — were demolished oregon severely damaged.

The quake besides brought the surviving and the dormant adjacent person successful a federation which, similar Mexico, celebrates a Day of the Dead holiday: In the countryside extracurricular the metropolis of Les Cayes, immoderate of the frontyard burial crypts were breached unfastened by the unit of the quake, exposing coffins inside.

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And immoderate of the surviving came person to the sedate than anyone should: Serge Chery, the caput of civilian defence for the Southern Province, which covers Les Cayes, said that his officers had recovered 2 women buried successful the rubble of a two-story flat gathering due to the fact that they had been capable to pass with the extracurricular satellite via cellphones.

Such stories are communal rumors successful catastrophe zones. Chery said his section received innumerable mendacious reports of specified calls. “We dialed 1 fig that radical said was sending messages from a collapsed house, and a surviving idiosyncratic answered it successful Jeremie,” a adjacent city.

But Chery refused to telephone the existent cellphone rescue a miracle.

“The lone occurrence was that they had their phones charged and successful their hands astatine the clip of the quake, and they had capable country to dial afterward,” Chery said.

Government infirmary morgues, similar the 1 astatine the Les Cayes’ wide hospital, are astir empty. That’s because, arsenic the hospital’s manager admits, they haven’t had moving refrigeration astatine the morgue for astatine slightest 3 months owed to problems with the electrical equipment.

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Instead, section residents cognize they person to instrumentality deceased to 1 of the dozens of small, humble backstage ceremonial homes successful the area.

There, astatine slightest air-conditioned rooms mean the bodies won’t decompose portion relatives conflict to travel up with capable wealth to conscionable burial costs that tin tally astir $500, a luck for radical successful the hemisphere’s poorest country.

Jean Eddy Montezima runs 1 specified parlor, the St. Jaques ceremonial location successful Les Cayes, connected a shoestring, and helium is overworked and fed up. As helium spoke with journalists, different rickety, informal “ambulance” — really conscionable an SUV with a folding stretcher successful the backmost — pulled up with different body, a pistillate who died of earthy causes astatine a section hospital.

That’s good, due to the fact that Montezima says helium is nary longer accepting the bodies of quake victims. He has 15 corpses crowding his small, air-conditioned rooms. The woman’s assemblage was carried into the parlor and relatives promised to travel backmost aboriginal to marque arrangements.

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Montezima says helium has taken successful the bodies of astatine slightest 50 quake victims since Saturday astatine his tiny building, wherever a noisy generator growls 24 hours a time to support aerial conditioners moving truthful the bodies won’t decompose.

“A batch of radical whitethorn not person the wealth to hide them,” Montezima said. “If the families don’t travel back, I volition astir apt person to bash a wide sedate with them.” Such a solution is small abbreviated of a sacrilege successful Haiti, but the beleaguered ceremonial location manager has small choice.

“I was already moving 8 hours a day, and present I person to enactment 24,” helium said. “I americium burning $50 successful state each day. We request an instauration oregon a foundation to donate to assistance with the costs.”

“In immoderate cases, the bodies were successful specified atrocious condition, we had to hide them immediately,” helium said, adding helium can’t manus that task disconnected to the government. “If the assemblage is severely decomposed, they won’t judge them astatine the morgue.”

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Eventually, though, the dormant and the surviving person to portion ways.

Chery has the achy task of deciding, on with different authorities, erstwhile to nonstop successful dense machinery to wide the rubble, though helium acknowledges it volition ’inevitably” effect successful churning up much bodies. Chery said that successful the Les Cayes country alone, 300 radical are inactive missing; galore are astir apt inactive nether tons of breached factual and brick.

“We are readying a gathering to commencement clearing each of the sites that were destroyed due to the fact that that volition springiness the proprietor of that tract astatine slightest the accidental to physique thing temporary, retired of wood, to unrecorded connected that site,” Chery said, noting that “it volition beryllium easier to administer assistance if radical are surviving astatine their addresses, alternatively than successful a tent.”

He stressed the request to commencement engineering inspections of buildings to find retired which are safe. “If we privation the schools and banks and hotels to commencement working, we person to springiness radical confidence, due to the fact that they don’t privation to spell backmost into those buildings now,” Chery said.

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“In Haiti, it is thing cultural; families are attached to their dead,” Chery said. “Culturally, adjacent with cholera oregon COVID-19, radical privation their relatives to beryllium buried successful a bully grave.” But owed to the mangled information of galore quake victims, galore were buried immediately.

That cognition is connected show astatine the Marc Dor Lebrun ceremonial home, which helium touts arsenic the city’s cleanest and champion equipped. Here grieving families tin rent a 30-foot-long agelong Humvee limousine to transportation the ceremonial cortege.

Stainless alloy refrigerated assemblage cabinets enactment 1 country and an air-conditioned mentation country lies nearby. But with the bodies of 17 earthquake victims, and 22 others, already filling his facilities, Lebrun says helium cannot instrumentality immoderate more.

“It’s due to the fact that we’re honest. We’re telling radical we are not receiving immoderate much bodies,” Lebrun said. “I don’t cognize astir the remainder of them,” helium said, referring to little well-equipped homes.

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“We got 3 bodies that were truthful severely destroyed that we enactment them successful zippered assemblage bags and gave them to relatives and they buried them connected their own,” Lebrun said.

For the remainder — families who can’t conscionable the costs of burials — Lebrun said helium won’t crook them distant oregon acceptable a fixed price. “This is the situation,” helium said, referring to Haiti’s grinding poverty. “If a household can’t pay, we’ll assistance them out.”

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