September 20, 1994

Carter clinched a deal. General Raoul Cédras will complete his term of office (15th October 1994) and leave the country with his military entourage. He will be guaranteed safe conduct and a rich haven somewhere, maybe Panama. The exiled Aristide will return on October 30th and the country will have another bash at democratic rule. Meantime the Americans will now peacefully 'occupy' Haiti like overseers or policemen. They'll stay until United Nations forces replace them. For two nights after the occupation gunshots ring out whether in defiance or celebration it is hard to tell. And joyous singing floats up from the slums in the valley below the Hotel Christophe, all night long, each night of our stay.

September 22, 1994

An interview with Mireille Durocher Bertin. She's an ambitious lawyer with great energy, money and influence. Mme. Bertin keeps a variety of slave chains in her sumptuous garden on Pétionville. I am appalled at the weight and size of these grim reminders. Mme. Bertin slips a pretty ankle into a gruesome, rusted shackle and a wrist inside another. The effect is shocking (she knows it) and incongruous, because she is elegantly gowned and appears so fragile.

She plans to run against Aristide whom she detests and labels an anarchist and a 'killer'. She claims he has exploited the class division. Her English is smooth, her voice, melodious. She is charmingly anti American, but she means business. She has trained her children to despise Americans. She does not want them to forget that the last time the Americans invaded Haiti they stayed for twenty-four years. She agrees that many of the past governments were incompetent. Mme. Bertin seems fearless in her resolve to help her country. She says she is not pro-Cédras—she is simply 'anti-American intervention.' But she is a member of the mulatto élite that has a history of racism.

People start to relax and welcome the occupiers. The Aristide supporters are particularly vociferous. They're from the poorest ghettos, like Cité Soleil, a behemoth of a slum, worse than anything I have seen in Asia or Africa. Nothing in Calcutta could have prepared us for this. The stench! Open sewers under the sun. The smell of decaying flesh. It must be a blessing not to survive in this hellhole. Creatures die so readily. Sacking, rippled tin and cardboard are the materials of these appalling 'dwellings'. What happens when the summer storms unleash their load?

Tim shoots inside the shack of three prostitutes. They don't demur; they murmur and smile at him with dead, glazed eyes. All three have the AIDS look. They are ghastly-worn, emaciated, dying. On the corrugated walls of their dwelling they have pasted magazine pictures of glamorous white models. A tin tray on the floor holds several old plastic tumblers-refreshments for clients.

In another shack lives an old woman so poor that all she owns is the old jupe and cardigan she is wearing. There is absolutely nothing in her shack: not a rag nor plate nor utensil; just the mud of the floor and light breaking through the holes and cracks in the cardboard walls. She stiffens and poses for the camera, doesn't know whether she should smile. Her face is so withered, so defined by pain it makes me weep.

We leave. Around a corner children come running up to us, energetic, laughing, curious. Another bend and we come upon a group of men sitting round a box, playing dominoes. The men don't seem to have a care in the world. Do they believe their salvation is at hand? Or are they past worrying about who is in charge? Running water and electricity, food and shelter are the basics that they need desperately. A U.S. Government assessment described Haiti as: '...the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and one of the poorest in the world... unemployment: fifty percent... infant mortality: one hundred and one per one thousand... life expectancy: 56 years.' Cold understatement.

September 23, 1994

Billy has organized a visit to a voodoo ceremony. 'But first I take you see the Bocor (witch doctor).' Stephan describes the scene roughly to me later (I did not make this trip with the crew. I had to stay behind and log videotapes in preparation for the 24 minute documentary): '...he's a youngish fellow—a real con-artist. Operates out of this caille [hut] full of disgusting things in bottles and crucibles. There were devilish pictures painted on the floor and walls, skulls and skins all over the place. He told me his payment was fifty dollars so I forked up. Right off he driveled on in gibberish and went into a trance, or so he pretended, and while he was in this trance he told me he was no longer a Bocor but a spirit and the spirit had to be paid too. I had to cough up another fifty bucks.'

The editing begins. I've short-listed almost all the tapes—about 12 hours' worth. I'm starting 'out of sequence' as the opening hasn't been shot yet.

We edit the 24-minute story through the night. Stephan writes his 'text'.

At one-thirty in the morning, Christianne, the WTN (World TV News) coordinator, rushes in to tell us that violence has broken out in Cap Haitien. Possibly nine people have been killed. Somebody picked up the news on an army scanner. It's our last night in Port-au-Prince and we can barely take it in. As we get on with the business at hand we hear the frenetic commotion of journalists and crews organizing to cover this, the latest happening.

At five thirty in the morning we record Stephan's narration and mix it with natural sounds. EBU feeds it via satellite to Germany. It is all over. Exhausted after the agitation we go back to the Hotel Christophe to pack. I get into a row with Ramon, the receptionist, about some lost laundry. At last we are driving for the airport. It is 8:00 AM. I'm spaced out with fatigue; I think I see a monstrous dragonfly alight on a bougainvillea tree but it's only a helicopter floating by.

We fly back to Miami on a Transport C130. Nothing else is available. The young soldiers who accompany us hand out earplugs and MRE's (meals ready to eat). I slump back into the webbing seat in the center of the Transport. My vision mists over, a drone comforts my ears, a considerate soldier is fastening my seat belt for me but I'm already into sleep.