A Harvard symposium, \u201cThe Haitian Crisis,\u201d featured five panelists recently. Unbeknownst to each another, three of the five chose to use the unnerving word \u201capocalypse\u201d in their opening remarks.<\/p>\n
But there are two meanings to \u201capocalypse,\u201d one despairing and one hopeful. The word can mean a disaster of epic proportions. But it can also suggest a form of revelation. Both meanings came up during the two-hour panel discussion in a crowded Thompson Room on Jan. 29.<\/p>\n
The symposium was Harvard\u2019s first formal, public exploration from a humanities perspective of the Jan. 12 earthquake that claimed many thousands of lives, destroyed much of the capital city, disabled the main port, and crippled the national airport. It has been an epic disaster that, as one Harvard medical observer said last week, will turn Haiti into \u201ca nation of amputees.\u201d<\/p>\n
A crush of collective emotions remained palpable through the session, which was co-sponsored by Harvard\u2019s Committee on African Studies<\/a>, the Department of African and African American Studies<\/a>, and the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe meaning of this tragedy is not just for the people of Haiti, but for the people of the world,\u201d said Evelynn M. Hammonds<\/a>, who spoke before the panel discussion began. She is dean of Harvard College<\/a> and Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science and of African and African American Studies.<\/p>\n To panelist Jennifer Leaning<\/a>, a medical doctor with decades of expertise in humanitarian relief, the quake\u2019s aftermath called to mind the darker meaning of apocalypse in a Haiti gripped by an \u201cincalculable magnitude of pain and loss.\u201d The past three weeks add up to more than a disaster, she said, employing the classic word denoting a sudden event that overwhelms the resources of an area.<\/p>\n \u201cThis one is not improperly called an apocalypse: a catastrophe, a cataclysmic event,\u201d said Leaning, director of the Fran\u00e7ois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights<\/a> at the Harvard School of Public Health<\/a>. \u201cThis is off the scale.\u201d<\/p>\n She added, \u201cThis is going to be one of the worst natural disasters to hit this world in this century.\u201d<\/p>\n Junot D\u00edaz<\/a>, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of \u201cThe Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao\u201d and a native of the Dominican Republic that borders Haiti, acknowledged the darker meaning of apocalypse as well. \u201cThe figures are unimaginable,\u201d he said of Haiti\u2019s plight, \u201cthe pain that we are describing and its consequences unspeakable.\u201d<\/p>\n But the earthquake and its aftermath may yet prompt a revelation, said D\u00edaz, who said there might be a moment of potential awakening for mankind. \u201cThe world as most of us thought it [existed] was revealed to be quite a different world,\u201d he said of the\u00a0 aftermath, one in which people might now see the moral fault lines of an international economy in which profits appear paramount.<\/p>\n In capitalist terms, said D\u00edaz, \u201cThe Haiti catastrophe is not just normal, but natural.\u201d<\/p>\n Places such as Haiti traditionally have been exploited for their natural resources by richer nations, which remain safe amid great \u201carks\u201d of wealth, said D\u00edaz, reaching for a biblical metaphor. Meanwhile, exploitation weakened poorer nations, he said, and in fact \u201cstripped them of their capacity to build arks.\u201d<\/p>\n Panelist Patrick Sylvain<\/a>, Ed.M. \u201998, a Haitian-born poet, said that nation\u2019s successive colonizations \u2014 economic and otherwise \u2014 included a subjugated physical landscape, a verdant territory stripped for lumber and to grow sugar. The result was not only deforestation and soil erosion, he said, but \u201ca ruling class incapable of organizing a state.\u201d<\/p>\n Revelation may start small, said D\u00edaz, using the example of his native land, which for decades has occupied an uneasy border with Haiti, disparaging it with racial invective as a dark hell of dysfunction. But after the quake, he said, the Dominican Republic, \u201ca country that itself is catastrophically poor,\u201d reached across a 100-year cultural and historical rift to provide the first aid to reach Haiti.<\/p>\n In the same way, said D\u00edaz, the Haitian apocalypse might inspire in the wider world a similar \u201cturning point of solidarity\u201d for the beleaguered nation. It might inspire the First World to set aside entrenched ideas about Haiti \u2014 and predominantly black places like it \u2014 as enclaves of helpless victims.<\/p>\n As it stands, said D\u00edaz, \u201cSome very toxic narratives are being slipped into these aid packages,\u201d and changing those default narratives \u201cis the best way of helping.\u201d<\/p>\n Three of the five panelists were medical doctors, all sympathetic with a humanistic perspective on Haitian aid. Leaning, for one, called D\u00edaz\u2019s sense of apocalypse-as-revelation \u201cbrilliant\u201d and agreed that the quake would lead to \u201ca major re-conceptualization\u201d of Haiti and the nature of international aid.<\/p>\n But the three physicians also steered the conversation back into the numbers column.<\/p>\n Gregg Greenough<\/a>, an emergency physician and director of research at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative<\/a>, acknowledged the power of culture in any medical setting, saying that \u201chealth, of course, doesn\u2019t occur in a vacuum.\u201d But \u201cthe present tense\u201d of a wrecked and needy Haiti, he said, occupies his thoughts.<\/p>\n Even before the earthquake, said Greenough, 60 percent of Haiti\u2019s public health infrastructure had been destroyed in 2008 by four hurricanes. Health statistics there were grim anyway. Malnutrition stunts 20 percent of children under 5, infant mortality is among the highest in the world, almost half of Haitians had no access to clean water, and only 58 percent of the people were immunized against common diseases.<\/p>\n This last statistic, said Greenough, means that, even before the quake, Haiti was without so-called \u201cherd immunity,\u201d the immunization rate (around 85 percent) that keeps epidemics in check.<\/p>\n After the quake, the pattern of injury \u2014 mostly \u201ccrush\u201d wounds \u2014 normally would require a high degree of technical skill to treat medically, including specialized surgical teams and dialysis machines. This strained a damaged system even more. Greenough said that Haiti needs to \u201crebuild [its] health system from the ground up.\u201d<\/p>\n Statistics are behind another problem, said Leaning: the fact that half of Haiti\u2019s population is under 18. The earthquake \u201ckilled large numbers of adults,\u201d she said, creating a chaotic diaspora of children who are now vulnerable to exploitation, including by \u201cslavery, precipitous adoption \u2026 [and] instructive, marauding adults.\u201d<\/p>\n Haitian orphans belong in Haiti, said Leaning, and other countries can help that goal by supporting Haitian community organizations, along with family-tracing and identification systems.<\/p>\n While international aid efforts have focused on water, food, shelter, and medical aid, another critical focus will be on psychological trauma, and the culturally sensitive mental health interventions that need to follow. \u201cI\u2019m living it, day to day, for the past two weeks,\u201d said Haitian-born panelist and physician Marie-Louise Jean-Baptiste, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School with a practice at the Cambridge Health Alliance. \u201cEverybody is in pain.\u201d<\/p>\n She described a series of cases, including Haitian patients whose emotional turmoil is spiking blood pressure and worsening diabetes, and patients who suffer from depression, memory loss, and sleeplessness.<\/p>\n In turn, patients fear that treatment for mental illness will stigmatize them or affect their capacity to find jobs, said Jean-Baptiste. U.S. health providers need to address mental health issues among Haitians early, she said, in a situation \u201cthat will not last just a year.\u201d<\/p>\n Panel members said what is missing in media coverage of the Haitian crisis so far is\u00a0 context, \u201cthe long history of problems and poverty and despair and distress\u201d in Haiti, the realization, as Leaning said, \u201cthat this earthquake is playing on in an almost malignant and deadly way.\u201d She added, \u201cThe issue to look at in Haiti is all <\/em>context.\u201d<\/p>\n Sylvain called Haiti \u201cthe founding nation of modernity,\u201d born in a slaves\u2019 revolt and its nationhood established in 1804. Now, members of Haiti\u2019s elites are sleeping outdoors beside their servants, a democracy of fear that may finally create \u201ca social contract.\u201d<\/p>\n But overshadowing that hope are disruptions to Haitian life, including one dramatic \u201cantithesis of culture,\u201d said Sylvain: burning bodies of many quake victims.<\/p>\n Then there is the disruption of Haiti\u2019s post-earthquake reverse migration into the countryside, he said, a situation that in the next few months could chill Haiti\u2019s relations with the Dominican Republic, set off a new wave of boat people, and spawn uneasiness in the countryside.<\/p>\n As displaced Haitians encroach on farms, Sylvain feared, \u201cPeasants will start pulling machetes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Harvard symposium, \u201cThe Haitian Crisis,\u201d featured five panelists recently. Unbeknownst to each another, three of the five chose to use the unnerving word \u201capocalypse\u201d in their opening remarks. But there are two meanings to \u201capocalypse,\u201d one despairing and one hopeful. The word can mean a disaster of epic proportions. But it can also suggest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-267555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}