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Disaster in Haiti: UMaine student speaks on devastation in his homeland

Posted on Jan. 21, 2010, at 1:08 a.m.

After first hearing of the earthquake that devastated Haiti last week, University of Maine doctoral student Lucner Charlestra immediately started making phone calls in an attempt to connect with friends and loved ones in the small Caribbean nation.

He wasn’t too worried about his mother in Anse d’Hainault — the seaside city in southwest Haiti where Charlestra was born and raised — but he was concerned for the well-being of his sisters and friends in Port Au Prince, the capital city and focal point of the temblor’s damage. Charlestra lived in Carrefour, a suburb of Port Au Prince, for 13 years before coming to UMaine.

Initial news of his loved ones’ whereabouts and safety came from other family members here in the states. The day after the quake, Charlestra heard from his cousin in New Jersey, who said his family was safe. Not satisfied with secondhand reports, he kept trying to contact them.

Three days later, he connected with his family in Haiti. Everyone was alive.

His sister Edna, a nurse in Port Au Prince, suffered a minor injury to her leg when her porch collapsed, felling a slab of concrete onto her thigh. His sister Mercia, a student also living in the capital, and his brother Wagner, a police officer in the port city of Saint-Marc, were both unharmed. They described the situation to Lucner, telling him of bodies lying in the streets and homes reduced to rubble.

“They just told me it was devastation,” Charlestra said in an English accented by his native Creole. “The extent of the destruction was unimaginable. It’s a humanitarian catastrophe.”

Charlestra came to UMaine in 2003 on a Fulbright Scholarship to earn his doctoral degree in ecology and environmental sciences. He feels lucky — though he said ‘luck’ may not be the most appropriate word — not to have lost any family members or friends to the earthquake.

“Not so far,” he said.

He first heard of the earthquake from a friend in New Jersey who called in the evening on Jan. 12 — the day the quake struck — to ask if Charlestra was watching “the event in Haiti.”

At first he thought his friend was talking about some sort of political turmoil, the kind from which Haiti has suffered for years, according to Charlestra. He was surprised to find out it was an earthquake. He flipped to one of the cable news channels and saw pictures and video of the ravaged capital.

“I quickly understood that we were in for a disaster,” Charlestra said. “Especially with the city and the conditions the people live in, I knew it was going to be bad.”

Charlestra has met and befriended several other Haitians in the United States — he says he can pick fellow countrymen out of a crowd when he meets them, instinctively speaking in Creole when he greets them. Many are other students or people he met playing soccer. He has spoken with them since last week. Some have not been as lucky as he has been, and have lost friends and family in the aftermath of the earthquake.

Though estimates vary, the death toll could reach 200,000. The temblor toppled buildings, crushing and trapping thousands of people under piles of concrete and steel. According to a U.N. assessment of the earthquakes damage, nearly half the buildings in Carrefour — Charlestra’s neighborhood in the Port Au Prince metropolitan area — were destroyed.

Charlestra normally looks people in the eye when he speaks, but when asked about the death and devastation the earthquake caused in Haiti, he looks into the distance, pursing his lips before answering. He said that when he thinks about the earthquake, the images of fallen buildings and dead bodies come back to him as vividly as the first time he saw them.

Now that the earthquake is over, Charlestra said the big concern in Haiti is whether the survivors will have access to food, water and medical care. He recalled a story he heard on television about a little girl who was saved from under the rubble of a collapsed building, only to die some days later from a lack of medical care.

He said it is primarily the Haitian government’s responsibility to organize the relief effort to ensure relief comes to as many survivors as possible. He is optimistic but said it is unrealistic to think after a catastrophe like this that relief workers could provide life-saving care to every survivor.

Charlestra has a deep optimism that Haiti will bounce back from disaster, like it did after four hurricanes hit the country in 2008. He said his optimism is rooted in “the strength and resiliency of my people.” He beams with pride when he describes the warm and friendly character of Haitian citizens.

In the past, Haitians have dealt with disasters of economic, political and natural causes, but people always get together to help people out, Charlestra said. He talked about the strength of citizens getting together to help each other out and move rubble to free trapped neighbors — all of this without the help of the government.

He said this is important to remember as the news turns away from the earthquake and toward coverage of looting and other crime that may negatively portray struggling Haitians.

“In every country where you have a situation like this, like [after] Hurricane Katrina even, this happens,” Charlestra said. He said that though people are bound to act in desperation, these actions are not characteristic of the Haitian people.

For now, Charlestra tries to keep his mind on completing his degree. He goes to class and works in his labs in Holmes and Smith Halls. He tries to catch as many soccer games on TV as he can, trying not to think about the earthquake and the people that still need so much help. He said it’s too painful. He doesn’t watch the news for updates anymore, but he can’t keep the memories of those first images he saw on TV from his mind.

He hopes Haiti will recover from the catastrophe, rebuilding its infrastructure to a point where he can return and work after he graduates.

“It’s home,” he said. “Like you guys say here, ‘There’s no place like home.’”

Campus Currents: Disaster in Haiti