More from Zone of Death

A final count of our immediate family in Hayti? No fatalities. Last week Nadia's Maren/godmother called. Her name is Marie-Michelle. She had been reported confirmed dead immediately after the quake. Now it is revealed that she and Nadia, our 9 year old daughter, are in a displaced persons camp by the Dominican border and have been treated by Dominican doctors. Perhaps they are inside the DR, it is unclear. They don't have a cell phone number to call them back. After three weeks of failing hope this was wonderful news.

Lucienne will be flying in to Santo Domingo on the 8th of February and taking a bus overland. She is taking a tent which was donated here in New Orleans and LED flashlights, etc. Mostly money. Our friend Thor Burnham is in Port au Prince now rounding up and taking care of his wife's family who are sleeping on the street around Delmas 30. My mother in law Vanita Louis is camping in PetionVille at Place Saint Pierre, the central square of the city. Jeff, the 14 year old cousin has a Voila cell phone and is taking care of business. Luckily Vanita has her identification so she is able to get money from Western Union or Moneygram, etc.

Brother Marcel found his three children. Where were they? Dunno, but the first reports were that they were missing. Sister Beatrice has her two kids. Our very first call was from Beatrice's ex-husband who came immediately from Santo Domingo to search and reported that the whole neighborhood where they lived had fallen into the ravine and no one was to be found.

The eventuality of everyone being found alive after so many have died is amazing. Merci Bon Dieu.

My sister Pamela Lyall got a lot of interest among her friends and started a prayer circle to envision Nadia alive and well. That seems to have worked out well. Some of her people wanted to send money directly to family of people whom they know, rather than to an aid agency. That is an excellent concept as well.

Some of our friends and family who may wish to contribute to a salvation fund for my wife's family in Haiti.
Here is a facebook email which I sent to Tracy in Humboldt.

Western Union is the best way now, cause it is free. They are waiving all transfer fees to Haiti.
I just sent $200 at the corner mini mart with a WU transfer desk. I picked up the dedicated phone
at the little table and talked to a woman who answered. I just told her "$200 to Vanita Louis in Haiti".
I took the order to the clerk and paid him; he entered it into a WU terminal and gave me a receipt.
(this was the first time I had ever done this) On that receipt is a confirmation number.
That number (and her ID) is what allowed Mama (Vanita Louis) to get the money at her local WU agent in PetionVille

So, there is the method to get money to Roxannes Grandmama, who will feed about 8 children.

Merci d'avance

more on Port au Prince

Today there was a 6am earthquake in Hayti. Lucienne received a call immediately from Jeff, her nephew/brother. A police woman in Place St Pierre (the central park in Petionville) was saying that the USA immigration had new rules allowing family members to leave Haiti and go to Etats Unis. I knew this wasn't true but had to get up and search the net for immigration news. Turns out that existing adoption applications are being expedited.

The final toll there in Petionville is two brothers dead, Jean Baptiste and Patrick. Beatrice's two kids are ok. Later brother Marcel called for the first time. The Voila cell network is up. He is sleeping in the street down around Nazon. His three kids have been found. Nadia, Lucienne's eldest daughter (and Roxanne's older sister) is still missing.

The Port au Prince apocalypse

The destruction of Port au Prince has captured the imagination of the USA. For us, it is personal. Lucienne's family all live in poor districts of Port au Prince. When I first heard of an earthquake in Haiti I wasn't too concerned. There was a small earthquake when we lived in Kenscoff; I hardly noticed it. By California standards it was nothing worse than a truck driving by.

This 2010 quake was far stronger than the 1989 Santa Cruz quake (usually mistakenly called a San Francisco quake) which I rode out balancing on my bouncing house. The Haiti quake, in particular, lasted for 35 seconds, a very long time. The measure of ground movement puts it towards the strongest possible quakes. Port au Prince is one of the least prepared large cities imaginable for such destruction.

Lucienne tried to call Haiti for hours on tuesday night, to no avail. No lines available, and the cell phone networks were probably not functioning at all. Wednesday a call came in from Haiti, from Ernest Pinchinat, the ex-husband of Lulu's sister Beatrice. He came in immediately from Santo Domingo and reported that the hillside neighborhood where they lived had all collapsed into the ravine. He could not find anyone. This is a bidonville/favela on the side of a hill behind where the Hotel Kinam is at the top of Petionville. Lucienne calls it Morne Calvaire, but it is the foot of the Morne.

The next day, at 3am one of the young boys in Mama's household (a nephew/cousin or something) called Lucienne and spoke just long enough to say "call me back". Well, you cannot call back. So, word from someone, but mysteries continue. Great grief here. No word about Nadia, Roxanne's older sister, who lives with her Maren/Godmother in Tabarre (close by Aristides old palace and the new US embassy).

On Saturday a friend of Marcel, Luciennes brother, called and said that Nadia's Maren was confirmed dead and Nanou is missing. Mama and Sister Beatrice are alive but with injured feet or legs. Injured how badly? Unknown. Two brothers are dead, some of the other children are alive. The number living there fluctuates and who is family or not also varies.

I started getting active on Twitter and find it actually useful for something like this. Some folks with satellite internet and some source of electricity were able to get word out online, where telephones were not useful. People whom I know were tweeting from Jacmel and Port au Prince.

Today NPR has the first reports of Leogane. I knew it would be bad there, the center of the quake was in the mountains just above Leogane. They said that 90% of the houses are destroyed and there had been no help at all in six days.

Last Testament

Michael Diebert wrote a good book about the excitement in Haiti this century. Some wacko in the pay of the terrorists wrote a newly dubious book, which Deibert debunks here. There has been amusing repartee back and forth.

stuck in Port au Prince

The family's flight was canceled due to the hurricane which passed to the south of Haiti. The whole of Sundays flights were canceled I guess. No one was at the airport at all. Madame spent the night at the hotel right by the airport; Visa Lodge.

This morning the AA staff at the airport sent everyone up to the American Airlines bureau at Delmas 32, quite a ways from the airport. Everyone who was denied a flight yesterday had to go there. Must have been a lot of people. Took her a number of hours to get to the counter; the kids went to sleep under the feet of the crowd.

She got a ticket to Miami, but not to Toronto. Hm.

The date of this flight? Aug 30. Ten days from now. Eleven days after the scheduled flight. They apparently do not care to send any extra planes to Port au Prince to pick up the days worth of passengers who were stranded.

They also do not feel any obligation to pay anything for this 10 day (no, 11 days) delay. AA is treating everyone like Haitians. No respect or concern at all.

Apparently there was a riot at the AA office when people started learning that they would be waiting many days, weeks for some people, for a flight to replace one days cancellation.

She said that the crowd smashed the windows of the office and the police had to be called. Must have been exciting with ti Emile-Alex having 18 months now, and two days after Roxie's fifth birthday party.

They are now at the hotel in PetionVille where Roxanne was born. Well, the hotel where we lived when Roxie was born. I'll have to call the Maitre to arrange the payment.

I guess kindergarten for Roxie will have to wait.

nightmare bus ride to toronto

We took the Greyhound from Arcata to Toronto; from whence Lucienne and the kids flew to Port au Prince. The flight was on bonus miles, so it cost only tax. Flying to Toronto would have been prohibitive. Everything was booked, and tickets were at full price. A bonus mile flight from San Francisco was unobtainable; everything booked. Flights to Port au Prince are actually mostly full. Lots of Diaspora going home for the summer. For the heat?

So the Greyhound was OK up to Kansas city. We did have to change busses in San Francisco, Salt Lake City and Denver, but the run from Denver to Chicago was supposed to be on one bus. In Kansas City they were short a driver; we were already running a two bus train from Denver. We got a good driver out of K.C., then had a flat tire just outside of St Louis. Right next to the airport as a matter of fact. A replacement bus came in only a half hour or so and our driver took us and our transferred baggage to St Louis. That was where the nightmares started. One bus was available to go to Chicago and I was in charge of getting six bags from our bus to the next one. By the time I got Lulu and Roxie/Emile-Alex over the the Chicago bus and back to the baggage carts there were only 5 bags. Frantically looking for the sixth bag and being told that the Chicago bus was full put me in a good mood.

The station manager told us that there was no room on the Chicago bus, and that our tickets to Detroit, then Toronto, were routed wrong anyway. Where is the missing bag? He doesn't know. Probably on a bus to Chicago. This regardless of the policy that passengers are responsible for getting their own bags transferred.

After a bit of suppressed raging (we were already tired of changing busses) I accepted the managers advice that we should get on the bus to Indianapolis, then change to a bus to Detroit. Ok, we went to Indianapolis, where we learned that there is no bus to Detroit. So we got on a bus to Dayton, where we were told that the next bus to Detroit was going to be full and no backup could be ordered from there as it was a contract location, not a dispatch hub. So we continued on that bus to Columbus. Where we changed busses again. To go to Cleveland, whence we would go to Buffalo, not Detroit. Our bag, remember, was on its way to Detroit.

Columbus was pretty crazy. One baggage guy seemed to be working, so I started pushing our baggage cart over to a door. The baggage guy came running up insisting that only he was authorized to push a cart. Huh? Other stations had no objection to folks using carts. We sat on one with our luggage in Denver for quite a while. Yah, so I started pushing the cart anyway. Then a security guard shouts at me from down the way "where are you going?". I ask "what?" and he goes psycho; I'm disrespecting him, etc. Hay-sus, the crazies that get hired as security guards in this country. The manager there eventually came out, just as this wacko was threatening to have me evicted from the property, and figured out where we should go to get to Toronto. She was good. She rolled her eyes about the antics of their hired wacko. We got new tickets cut. A bus to Cleveland was loading shortly and we got on that. Another change of bus would be required in Cleveland, as would Buffalo. When we were getting on the bus to Cleveland the very important baggage guy refused to put our bags on the bus, saying that we required new tags. Tags for Buffalo. I said "oh,ok. I'll go talk to a manager again" and went back inside, where another manager came out and actually put the bags on the bus. When I got back the very important baggage guy was no where to be seen, but our bags were loaded, bound for Cleveland.

But Cleveland. That was hell in the bus universe. Columbus to Cleveland, short run. Changing to yet another new bus today. There were no baggage carts available in the station and Lucienne made sure that she was in charge of tracking the bags this time; I let one disappear in St Louis, remember. We needed to get a bunch of bags and two kids around the corner to the next bus, which was sitting waiting. I tried to talk to a baggage worker about getting help with bags, but he deliberately turned and walked away from me. Lucienne started loading stuff onto the new bus (going to Buffalo) while I went back to get stuff from the bus from which we debarked. When I returned to the Buffalo bus I found Lucienne locked inside banging on the door. A half dozen staff are standing around in front of the bus laughing, the driver (who locked her inside), nowhere to be seen.

Now this is really outrageous, and bizarre. I reach out to open the bus door and another retarded security guard threatens me, saying only the driver is allowed to open the door. So, here I am with Roxie and Emile-Alex standing by the bus looking at Lucienne locked inside, a big pile of luggage sitting around the corner, out of sight, and I have to get that baggage 200 feet over here where 6 greyhound staff (plus a retarded contract employee) can look at it while they stand laughing. Ah. Yes. This is Greyhound style customer service. So I tell Roxanne to hold on to Alex while I go haul bags. Her mother can watch her from behind the locked bus door and 6 greyhound employees can stand there laughing. The retarded security guard tells me that I am not allowed to walk to get my baggage! This lame brain tells me that MY responsibility is to hold on to my children. While the staff's friends steal our baggage, perhaps?

I tell this brilliant service oriented person that their mother, standing 8 feet away, is watching them. He says that she is locked on the bus and I'd better not leave; I tell him that is the drivers responsibility. He goggles while I walk away, then he threatens to have me arrested.

I returned with the bags and piled them up in front of the bus and we wait for some strangely tortuous driver to return and open the door. It is full, just me and two kids waiting outside, now with all our baggage, and Lucienne standing on the steps just inside the locked bus door. And various baggage crew who refuse to touch baggage and some sort of assistant manager; she is very amused by the whole scene.

Saturday, 21 July 2007, Noon
Finally the driver returns. This departure was scheduled to depart at 11:25am, Saturday, 21 July 2007. (eh? documenting for later reference) It was waiting for our bus from Columbus to arrive and it is now past noon. The hard working baggage staff now observe that our bags are tagged for Detroit while this bus is going to Buffalo. Well, this is Cleveland while the tags say they should be in Chicago now. Our tickets are for Toronto and checking through the border is not allowed. Baggage loaders don't know this, apparently.

So, they very inventively insist that our bags may not be loaded on this bus to Buffalo; they will go to Detroit. Cute little attempts at further torturing paying customers. I calmly tell them that these are my bags and I now hold a ticket to Buffalo and that the manager at Columbus put them on a bus here with those tags on them. My refusing to panic at their attempts to torment us give them a little misgiving. The assistant manager who has heretofore done nothing but joke with the idle baggage loaders and security guard finally announces that she will write 'Buffalo' on the tags so that the loaders can consent to touch our baggage.

The driver returns to this crime scene and consents for us to enter his little kingdom, but then orders me to get in and sit down while he locks the door on all of us again while our bags remain sitting on the tarmac. I object that I must see that our bags are loaded. He orders me to sit or he'll evict me from the property. I observe that Greyhound policy clearly states that passengers are responsible for getting their bags on the bus. He growls very convincingly and clenches his fists. This was a rather convincing threat of violence I thought; I sat down and stretched to look out the window to see whether these brilliant Greyhound staff would load my bags or throw them away. They did get loaded and our sociopath driver was actually a competent driver; we got to Buffalo without further incident. Our bags were unloaded in Buffalo intact.

Transferring in Buffalo was no problem. Greyhound Canada takes over here. What a relief! The driver is civil and helpful, he is Quebecois. The bridge over the river has one lane into Canada and two lanes into the USA. The one Canadian bound lane flows, the two lanes into Homeland Security are backed up for a mile or so. Canadian security and immigration are friendly, unlike the experience going the other way. Lucienne's I-551 permanent resident card and Haitian passport gets her into Canada with no problem. Lucia, who lives in Toronto and has Canadian residency, cannot get into the USA. How rude.

Crossing into Canada with Greyhound Canada is a great relief. It feels like coming home after the torment we have had heaped upon us the past day and a half.

I eventually was able to get the number of the Detroit baggage department, and then get someone to answer. I was pleasantly surprized to find that they were able to send the missing bag along to Toronto. They would not check it thru, but in this case they gave it to the driver to check it thru customs. Ah, it must have been a Canadian driver on a Canadian bus; that explains it.

So, the bag arrived in Toronto. This bag had most of the presents bound for Port au Prince. The Logitech sound system for Marcels Playstation, lots of clothes and shoes which Lucienne had bought with her own money, etc.

I took the Toronto TTC downtown the next day. A very good transit system. The bus terminal is a few blocks from one of the subway stations. Found the baggage person there, a young chinese woman who had no knowledge of the USA. This I found when I remarked on how pleasant I found Greyhound Canada compared to Greyhound USA. East of the Mississippi at least.