Excerpts:
Sometime in the morning, maybe around 9am, a small helicopter landed outside and we went down to see who it was, as it did not appear to be UN or anyone else for that matter. It turned out that this was a private helicopter, chartered for a neighbor's wife and three small children by his father-in-law, who apparently had connections with the Dominican Ambassador. We asked the co-pilot, who had emerged to look for his human cargo, if the helicopter could come back if we paid them, or if they had a larger helicopter they could send to us, but the answer was rather vague, something to the effect of, 'I'll radio back and see.' Throughout the morning, helicopters touched down and left, including the long-awaited UN chopper and two more private helicopters arrived to evacuate people who apparently knew other well-connected people. Stephane tasked me with doing an Internet search for Dominican helicopter companies and I spent a lot of time sending SOS messages to charter companies.
As they were taking up their positions and inspecting the area, they discovered that there were thousands of residents gathering at the north end of the golf course. A large wall had fallen on that side, thus creating a breach through which tumbled person after person, creating an ever-encroaching mass of people who would normally not be allowed on the grounds of this exclusive club. The helicopters had attracted their notice and, believing that the choppers were delivering food and water that was not being distributed to them, the people decided to come find it themselves. While this is completely understandable given the situation, it is not a good feeling to find yourself facing a growing number of hungry, scared, desperate people. The UN soldiers were quite edgy and began to indicate that they might not stay the night. Even if they did, we did not feel that we could stay there and so began to decide where to go next.
We passed the same crumpled houses we had passed in the night, only now there were bodies, usually covered, sometimes not, placed outside of the houses on the sidewalk. One house had what looked like an entire family laid in front of it. I sort of stopped looking anywhere but at the back of the person directly ahead of me; there was just too much awfulness on all sides.
When we came to Stephane's lawyer's office, we paused for a moment. The building, which housed several more white-collar businesses, had been four or five stories and pretty good-looking, for a building in Haiti. It was now reduced to 10 ft-tall pancake, its stories so compressed that I initially thought I was looking at a different building, even though the sign proclaiming 'Moulins d'Haiti' was still standing next to it. I later learned that our chauffeur's daughter was likely crushed within that wreckage, as she had still been at work inside when the quake hit. The husband of one of Stephane's cousins also worked in there, but happened to have stepped out just before, a perfect illustration of the capriciousness of who died and who didn't.
For dinner, Stephane and I each had four crackers and half a piece of cheese. I'm not sure if Babeth and her mom ate at all. Everyone else was eating as if we could go to the store tomorrow, prompting Stephane to ask them what the hell they were thinking. We also discovered that our landlady had apparently gone into our house while we were away and had taken a full 5gallon container of water (the last potable water we had), as well as a $40 bottle of wine that had been a Christmas present for me from Stephane, and Stephane's only pair of flip flops. Her taking the latter two items was just a bit offensive; the theft of the former item was quite serious, as we needed to have water for at least 11 people. Had she mentioned to us when we arrived that she had taken the water, we would have understood -- it is an emergency, after all -- but the fact that she cached it away and didn't feel compelled to tell us where until we asked was over the line. This is the same woman who keeps a shrine to the Virgin in our driveway, but who had not paid her own staff for more than two months prior to the earthquake even though she had the money (yes, we know she had the money). Lovely woman.
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