{"id":326809,"date":"2010-02-16T11:41:19","date_gmt":"2010-02-16T16:41:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/globalvoicesonline.org\/?p=123164"},"modified":"2010-02-16T11:41:19","modified_gmt":"2010-02-16T16:41:19","slug":"haiti-between-grief-and-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/326809","title":{"rendered":"Haiti: Between Grief and Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite the difficulties encountered by Haitians<\/a> to get back to a normal daily life after the destructive earthquake of January 12th and the ongoing grieving in people's hearts, a place was given to the celebration of Valentine's Day <\/a>in the blogosphere.<\/p>\n

Alterpresse <\/em>explained the context<\/a> in which Valentine's Day was taking place this year [Fr]:<\/p>\n

\n

Des milliers de personnes ont encore pris part \u00e0 des activit\u00e9s religieuses ce 14 f\u00e9vrier, 3e jour sp\u00e9cial de recueillement, dans le cadre d\u2019un mois de deuil qui prend fin le 17 f\u00e9vrier, pour les centaines de milliers de disparus du terrible s\u00e9isme du 12 janvier.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Thousands of people took part in religious activities on February 12th, 3rd special day of prayers, during the month of mourning ending on February 17th, in memory of the hundreds of thousands of people who died in the January 12th earthquake.<\/div>\n

Haitipressnetwork<\/em> expressed<\/a> the difficulty for those who have lost their loved ones to cope with this situation. Here is one example of a young woman who lost her boyfriend after the quake and now lives in a makeshift tent camp [Fr]:<\/p>\n

\n

Guerdy Louis, une jeune fille de 19 ans vit un moment amer depuis le 12 janvier. Pourtant sa tristesse tant \u00e0 augmenter ces derniers jours \u00e0 l\u2019approche de la f\u00eate de la Saint-Valentin, car son petit ami a succomb\u00e9 suite \u00e0 des blessures subies lors du s\u00e9isme. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Guerdy Louis, a 19 year-old young woman has lived bitter days since January 12th. Incidentally, her sadness has been increasing lately as Valentine's Day is coming closer, because her boyfriend died from wounds due to the earthquake.<\/div>\n

In this same post, we learn that in this camp, among the 20-30 year old interviewees, 15% said that they had lost their significant other either during the earthquake or in its aftermath.<\/p>\n

However, the month-long mourning and three-day prayers have not completely overshadowed the celebration of Valentine's Day.
\nEspas Ayisyen<\/em> gave proof <\/a> [Fr] of the people's resilience through this celebration and also published a picture of a building decorated for Valentine's Day in Petion-Ville, taken by photographer Liliane Pierre-Paul:<\/p>\n

\n

En d\u00e9pit de la situation catastrophique r\u00e9gnant \u00e0 Port-au-Prince et du grand d\u00e9sarroi de la population apr\u00e8s le choc du 12 janvier 2010, les ha\u00eftiens toujours aussi magnanimes et alti\u00e8res c\u00e9l\u00e8brent ce dimanche la saint-valentin.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In spite of the disastrous situation in Port-au-Prince and the people's huge despair caused by the shock after the January 12th earthquake, Haitians, who are still magnanimous and proud, celebrate Valentine's Day on Sunday.<\/div>\n

Alterpresse<\/em> confirmed<\/a> [Fr] the mix of feelings but insists on the fact that Valentine's Day has never been celebrated by all the population, even before the disaster:<\/p>\n

\n

La douleur ressentie pour la perte d\u2019\u00eatres chers n\u2019a pas totalement effac\u00e9 la traditionnelle f\u00eate de la Saint Valentin, c\u00e9l\u00e9br\u00e9e par certaines cat\u00e9gories urbaines dans un partage de chocolats et de fleurs entres amoureux et amis.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The grief after the loss of loved ones did not completely shadow the traditional Valentine's Day, celebrated by some urban social groups, in which lovers and friends exchange chocolate and flowers.<\/div>\n

This year in Haiti as anywhere else, Valentine's Day brought up a rise of economic activity for street vendors and other stores [Fr]:<\/p>\n

\n

Des supermarch\u00e9s et des magasins sp\u00e9cialis\u00e9s ont promu des offres sp\u00e9ciales et certains d\u2019entre eux sont rest\u00e9s ouverts au-del\u00e0 des heures r\u00e9guli\u00e8res pour satisfaire ou stimuler la demande.<\/p>\n

Sur la place Saint Pierre de P\u00e9tionville, des vendeurs de fleurs n\u2019ont pas cess\u00e9 de proposer aux automobilistes et aux passants leurs bouquets de roses parfum\u00e9es.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Supermarkets and specialized stores promoted special deals and some of them even remained open beyond the regular hours in order to satisfy or boost consumers' demand. <\/p>\n

At place Saint Pierrein P\u00e9tionville, flower vendors kept offering car drivers and passers-by bunches of scented roses.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In this troubled period, it is quite difficult to address questions of love and sexual relationships between people and Haitipressnetwork<\/em> gave a glimpse of the issue in the same post<\/a>, with this poll [Fr]:<\/p>\n

\n

Pour ce qui des relations intimes, notre enqu\u00eate a r\u00e9v\u00e9l\u00e9 que certains couples font l\u2019amour malgr\u00e9 la promiscuit\u00e9 qui r\u00e8gne dans les camps. En effet, 25 % des personnes interrog\u00e9es ont affirm\u00e9 avoir eu des relations sexuelles avec leur partenaire. Cependant 8, soit 40 % indiquent qu\u2019ils ne peuvent pas y arriver alors que 10 % affirment qu\u2019ils n\u2019ont pu communiquer que par t\u00e9l\u00e9phone, sans se voir.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As for intimate relationships, our survey has shown that some couples can still make love in spite of the promiscuity in the camps. 25% of the interviewees stated that they have had sex with their partners. However 8 (40%) say they cannot do it whereas 10% declared that they are able to communicate with their partners only by phone, as they can't see each other.<\/div>\n

The necessity to communicate with loved ones is also a point stressed by Alterpress<\/em> in conclusion to the Valentine's Day post <\/a>[Fr]:<\/p>\n

\n

Des amis et conjoints ont \u00e9chang\u00e9 des messages de Saint-Valentin \u00e0 travers des SMS sur les cellulaires. \u00ab L\u2019\u00e9v\u00e9nement (du 12 janvier) me rappelle qu\u2019il faut toujours dire aux \u00eatres chers combien nous les aimons \u00bb, lit-on dans un SMS. \u00ab On ne sait jamais ce qui peut arriver demain et il peut \u00eatre trop tard \u00bb, ajoute-t-il en soulignant que \u00ab ton absence laisserait un vide dans ma vie \u00bb.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Friends and spouses exchanged text messages for Valentine's Day via their cell phones. A message read “The event (of January 12th) reminds me of the necessity to always tell those you love how much you do”. “We cannot say what is going to happen tomorrow and it may be too late” it says and adds “your absence would leave an empty place in my life.”<\/div>\n

Please visit Liliane Pierre-Paul's Flickr photostream about Haiti<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite the difficulties encountered by Haitians to get back to a normal daily life after the destructive earthquake of January 12th and the ongoing grieving in people's hearts, a place was given to the celebration of Valentine's Day in the blogosphere. Alterpresse explained the context in which Valentine's Day was taking place this year [Fr]: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4117,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-326809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326809","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\/4117"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}