PORT-AU-PRINCE: Clad in white, Haitians congregated throughout Port-au-Prince Friday for tearful ceremonies to mark one month since a cataclysmic earthquake shattered their country.
In the central Champs de Mars square, where the impact of the 7.0 magnitude temblor is seen in the sprawling tented camps that now dominate the plaza, people began to gather from before dawn.
At the memorial service, mourners wept for loved ones lost in an event many simply call “the catastrophe.” Some 217,000 people are reported to have died as a result of the Jan. 12 quake and an estimated 1.2 million people remain homeless, including an estimated 650,000 children. The government declared Friday a day of mourning as many businesses shuttered and most of Port-au-Prince’s normally bustling streets were eerily quiet.
But streets leading to the Champs de Mars filled with throngs of people — dressed in traditional funereal colors, black and white — traveling by foot, taxi and motorbike to take part in a spectacular outpouring of emotion.
“Today there are many children who have lost their parents,” a preacher in the Champs de Mars said. Expressions of intense suffering were seen in the crowd looking back at him.
“The Haitian people may be poor but they are richest in the world in grace and spirit.”
At the national university, President Rene Preval sat sorrowfully in a white shirt and black arm band. He was joined by his wife and top government officials as a brass-rich orchestra played a somber rendition of “Amazing Grace.” Preval’s embattled government, itself decimated by the powerful quake, has for a month struggled to help the already impoverished country rise to its knees.
In Petionville, once a well-to-do suburb of the capital, another group gathered at the center of another crowded camp to hear a Protestant preacher lead prayers.
While hundreds of people dressed in white pressed toward the band leading them in prayer, others simply arose in the web of tarpaulin and sheets where they slept. But amid the mourning, some activities continued.
On the other side of the Place Saint-Pierre, men waited in their Sunday best as their wives collected rice at one of the distribution points that help keep the destitute alive. The recovery effort has seen a massive outpouring of support from the international community, as individuals around the globe also dug deep into their pockets to help a country and people most have never seen.
But even a month after the quake the need for basic items was acute. “We haven’t even gotten water,” said 27-year-old mother of two Carline Nazaire.
The UN’s humanitarian chief, John Holmes, arrived in Haiti on Friday as part of a three-day visit to see the massive aid effort.
