PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Michaelle Jean brought a welcome splash of laughter and joy to a place racked with grief, death and poverty Wednesday as she paid a whirlwind visit to Haiti on the anniversary of last year’s devastating earthquake.
Canada’s former governor general received a hero’s welcome in the country of her birth, which has been struggling to recover from the Jan. 12 quake that toppled entire city blocks, razed buildings and killed an estimated 230,000 people.
The mood was sombre as she arrived for a memorial ceremony at Port-au-Prince’s Universite Quisqueya, where 23 people lost their lives.
“Everybody, everybody is in mourning right now,” Jean said.
Thinking back on the disaster and its massive human toll is an important step towards the country’s painstakingly slow rebuilding and recovery effort, she added.
“It’s about remembering all the people who died last year and it’s about also putting all of our belief and hope in life,” said Jean, who as governor general visited the country last year — in particular her childhood home of Jacmel — in the weeks following the quake.
“Life must triumph here in Haiti.”
When she walked into a tent that served as a makeshift classroom, Jean was greeted like a celebrity. She chatted with elementary-school children and hugged faculty members as visitors lined up for the chance to line up and shake her hand.
Later, she attended a solemn mass at a mausoleum on the school grounds, where 16 of those who died on the property are now buried.
A school bus packed with mourners arrived at the crypt shortly after Jean and most journalists had left the site.
About 10 sobbing, screaming women had to be helped back to the bus after they visited the mausoleum. Men, several of whom had bloodshot eyes, fought back tears as they flanked the women and held them upright by the arms.
Following the end of her five-year term, Jean was appointed as a special envoy to Haiti for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO.
When asked if she thinks the world is failing to keep its promises to help Haiti, Jean said, “The world needs to keep its promise; right now it’s too slow.”
Reconstruction efforts remain disorganized and poorly co-ordinated, she added. “There’s too much confusion, not enough co-ordination, it’s not well-integrated enough.”
Elsewhere Wednesday in the broken city of Port-au-Prince, Haitians wearing their Sunday best filed into churches to sing hymns and pray for loved ones killed in the quake, which also claimed the lives of 58 Canadians.
Many people wore white, a colour associated with mourning in Haiti, and sang hymns as they navigated collapsed buildings and rubble, much of it exactly where it ended up in the aftermath of the quake.
Evens Lormil joined mourners in a crowd at the Catholic cathedral, its towering spires and vaulted roof now collapsed, waiting for a memorial Mass next to what was once a prominent landmark in a ragged downtown.
Jean, President Rene Preval and former U.S. President Bill Clinton attended a ceremony to lay the cornerstone for a new National Tax Office, where many workers were killed in one of the blows to the public sector that paralyzed the government following the earthquake.
Dignitaries from around the world are in Haiti to mark the anniversary. But they are also facing skepticism from a Haitian public that expected more progress toward reconstruction.
Aid groups say only about 5 per cent of the rubble from the quake has been removed and the capital is strewn with 20 million cubic yards (meters) of collapsed concrete and twisted steel debris, enough to fill dump trucks that would encircle half the globe. At least a million displaced people, including 380,000 children, are still in 1,200 tent-and-shack encampments that sprung up after the quake.
Haitian-American musician Wyclef Jean said many people are still hopeful but there are limits to their patience.
“You see them here, you see their energy, and they are smiling. They have hope, which is faith, but they can only have hope and faith for so long,” the musician and one-time presidential hopeful said as he got into a car in downtown Port-au-Prince, surrounded by workers wearing the blue T-shirts of his Yele Haiti charity.
“They are hoping that we at home do not forget them and that we put pressure on the powers that be to start the reconstruction because they want to work.”