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In the afternoon, my wife and I went out to buy some coffee.
And that's what saved me...
buying some coffee.
We live with our daughter in our house.
I heard something coming to this area, a noise.
The earth started to shake.
I said, "What's going on?"
We hurried back to get my daughter.
My daughter's name is Dominique.
So, when I got to my house,
I didn't even have time to say the end of her name, "nique."
I just said, "Do-"
and the house collapsed on me.
My head, my leg, my waist...
my arm is broken.
And when you look around here,
this house is destroyed, that house is destroyed.
These are destroyed. They're all destroyed.
This is the area where I grew up.
It's where I was raised
and where I lived for the first 20 years of my life.
This is where I was.
And now it's totally destroyed.
All of our history, our lives, our relationships are destroyed.
This is just a personal expression of the crisis,
that everyone is living after the earthquake.
Political decisions that were made in the past
forced people in the countryside to come and look for a livelihood
in Port-au-Prince.
When they came, there was no development of the space
where they lived.
They had to live one on top of the other,
and build houses wherever they could.
That's what brought on this disaster.
The state had a lot of responsibility in this.
Any disaster, any catastrophe in which nearly 250,000 people are killed,
is a result of society's organizational structure.
It's a result of bad state policies.
It's a result of poverty in the countryside
that forces people to migrate to the city and live in shantytowns.
It's a result of the centralization of the country that started in 1915.
People who died January 12th are not just victims of the earthquake,
but of the social system, the state system, and public policies
that the state failed to put in place to protect its population.
We are Haitian
We're not murderers, we're not thieves.
We aren't throwing rocks. We're just asking them to assist us.
They haven't ever given us anything.
They haven't given us tents, food, or health care.
We haven't received anything that we need.
So we are protesting to ask for something that's just.
I'm very worried.
If something like this happens today, and as decision makers
you haven't foreseen how to deal with it quickly?
People who stand in lines, every day, to wait for a sack of rice...
it becomes what they are living for.
You do that one time, two times, 10 times, 20 times, 30 times...
your level of thinking goes down.
There will come a time when you believe that a sack of rice
is the reason to live.
And I'm scared of this kind of poverty.
A couple days after the earthquake, MCC asked us,
"What are you doing? What do you want to do?"
MCC didn't say, "Here, do this!"
But together, MCC supported the work we had already begun,
and will support us in the work we're going to start.
For me, when international organizations are supporting local Haitian organizations,
that's how work should be done.
Why did this happen to Port-au-Prince?
Because socially, politically and economically,
we already lived in a situation that invited these consequences.