COUNTRY DIARY
‘Would you like to visit a voodoo priest?” asked Luke, smiling, as we drove through the thronging streets. Not your average offer, but then with his pistol, Luke was no ordinary driver. Nor was this an ordinary place. I was in Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Nothing can really prepare you for the chaos and poverty of this tiny Caribbean island nation.
It is a little over two years now since a magnitude 7.0 earthquake tore the country apart, killing countless thousands and leaving many more displaced. Port-au-prince is one of the most densely populated cities on Earth, and a pretty wretched place to be for the tens of thousands still living under temporary shelter and tents.
Vast pyres of burning rubbish can be seen on every corner. The rivers and canals have become open sewers, and cholera is rife. Crime is on the increase as the majority of people struggle to live on less than a pound a day. Kidnapping has now become a popular way to supplement a meagre income; this was why I was assigned my own bodyguard, who never strayed far from my side.
Little progress seems to have been made in the two years since the earthquake struck. Numerous tents still spill out of the destroyed buildings, along pavements, parks and squares. Wherever I looked I saw the distinctive domed tents distributed by Shelterbox (a charity for which I am a very proud ambassador).
The scale of the destruction will make it hard for Haiti ever to recover. In the centre of town, the Presidential Palace remains a symbolic ruin.
But look hard enough and there are small glimmers of hope. In a little coastal town an hour from the horrors of the capital, a wooden shelter houses several hundred schoolchildren. I sat in the shade of a tree and watched one of their lessons in Creole. Each child was immaculately dressed in clean, ironed clothes. The girls all wore ribbons in their hair and I could see my reflection in the boys’ shoes. Despite their suffering, the camps, the squalor, the disease and the hardships, these children wore their pride in their appearance.
These young Haitians represent the future of this impoverished place, the light of hopeful optimism that was so noticably absent elsewhere. I wish them and their country well. They deserve it.