Half-a-decade to the day, Haiti―and the world, for that matter―was shaken by an earthquake registering an infrastructure-leveling 7.0 on the Richter Scale. High-rises left to rubble, a death-toll numbering hundreds of thousands of lives, and millions left homeless, the island nation was left in complete disarray. However, five-years later, the island nation is well on the road to recovery.
"I saw bodies on the street, even bodies hanging off the buildings," Elvire Douglas, a veteran aid worker at Planet Vision, says. "It was just like an atomic bomb dropped there." Onlookers and other Haitians alike shared similar apocalyptic accounts. But, the memories are still seeded deep within the Haitian community.
"Speaking with the people, listening to their stories, I think that they experienced something that was really inhuman, something that it is impossible to understand, or to narrate," Marco Gualazzini, an award-winning Italian photographer, said during his visit to the country last month.
And, to add dry leaves to an already enraged fire, a cholera outbreak quickly followed the earthquake due to the lack of sanitation that ran rampant afterward. The cholera outbreak was estimated to have taken over 8,000 additional lives. But, despite the dreary events that took place in 2010, Gualazzini paints the country in a recovering light with one tantalizing characteristic in his observations―normalcy.
"just an ordinary market, a lively market which has been bartering, buying and selling all day long under the baking heat of the sun," Gualazzini says. "But for a city that only five years ago suffered an earthquake―creating so many orphans, widows and cripples, making so many poor people even poorer―I think it is an extraordinary sign of recovery."
And for one of the country's wealthier districts, Port-au Prince, signs of recovery are even more evident. High-rises have begun to fill the landscape once again, and the hustle-and-bustle of local, profitable business permeates the streets.
However in spite of the positive aspects, the country is still in great need of aid. Thousands still find themselves without roofs over their heads, countless children remain orphaned by circumstance, and some of the more impoverished sectors are still littered with debris. To learn how you can be of aid in future relief efforts, visit The American Red Cross for further information.
