In Haiti, hope is hard to come by

By Nancy San Martin, Deputy Managing Editor, HISTORY & CULTURE

Haiti, it seems, is a magnet for disasters.

A week after a powerful 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck the Caribbean nation, killing and injuring thousands and causing widespread damage, life is likely to get a whole lot worse for a population that has endured a string of misery and turmoil, including July’s brazen assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, torrential rains, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

As writer Jacqueline Charles and photographer and Nat Geo Explorer Andrea Bruce document in a story for National Geographic, hope is hard to come by. There is no shortage of willingness among Haitians to help; the issue has always been capacity.

Nearly $2 billion in aid that should have gone toward improving Haitians’ lives—aid given to Haiti by Venezuela, most of it since the 2010 earthquake—was wasted or embezzled by former government officials and those with close ties to the government, according to three separate reports.

While that aid was not necessarily earmarked for the communities rocked by this latest quake, if the money had been properly used and the infrastructure built, the thinking is that the country would be a step closer to responding to the latest disaster.

The chaos and political uncertainty that has ensnared Haiti has led to a worsening humanitarian and child malnutrition crises, Charles writes. (Pictured above, a child who was airlifted from the Haitian city of Jeremie by the U.S. Coast Guard is taken by rescue workers to a hospital in Port-au-Prince, the capital; below, old Colonial buildings in Jeremie collapsed during the latest earthquake.)

“Every time I hear of an earthquake or a storm, I feel like something in me is about to explode,” says Marie Roseline Macenat, 56, a mother of five. “It’s tears in your eyes; you are crying. You sense that you can no longer stand.”

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