A “Skewed Picture” Of Haiti: Reed Grad Speaks

Last fall I profiled a Reed Graduate, Sasha Kramer, for the college’s magazine. Kramer has been working in Haiti for the last few years on a nonprofit called SOIL, that works on composting human waste to turn into fertilizer for crops. I just called Kramer on Skype to talk about the earthquake.

• KRAMER (LEFT) IN HAITI BEFORE THE EARTHQUAKE WITH NON-PROFIT PARTNER SARAH BROWNELL

When I interviewed Kramer at the time, I was astonished to hear about living conditions in the country. You can read more in the Reed piece, but here’s a snapshot:

Haiti has the worst sanitation coverage in the western hemisphere; only 35% of adults in urban areas have access to a toilet. As a result, waterborne illness is the leading cause of death in children under five. At the same time, much of the country’s soil is depleted and conventional fertilizer is beyond the reach of most farmers, contributing to poor crop yields; Haiti currently imports 60% of its food.

She’s in Cap Haïtien, about a six-hour drive from the epicenter of the quake in Port-Au-Prince. She plans to drive to Port-Au-Prince tomorrow morning to offer assistance to quake victims. Members of her team will be looking to track down their families, Kramer plans to offer her vehicle to ferry groups of people back and forth and transport supplies, and also, offer her services as a Creole speaker, translating for aid workers who don’t speak the language.

Damage in Cap Haïtien isn’t as bad as in Port-Au-Prince, but Kramer still felt the quake, and there has been damage to buildings there.

“We live on the third floor of an apartment building,” she says. “The building shook for around 30 seconds, and looking out the window we could see all the other buildings moving around.”

A group of students from the University of Miami were visiting on Tuesday when the quake struck. “The first student to notice it saw a picture fall off my shelf,” she says. “At first we wondered, why’s that guy shaking the bed in the floor above me. It took about 15 seconds to realize what was going on.”

“It wasn’t until news started coming in from Port-au-Prince that it really hit us,” she says. “Everyone that you talk to here in Cap Haïtien has relatives there. Until now, the cellphones haven’t been working—you’ll get through every once in a while, so people really aren’t able to know about their families, and that’s been the hard thing. It’s going to take a little while, I think, for the emotional impact of all this to sink in.”

There have been gas problems related to the earthquake, and soon, Kramer says, people all over Haiti are going to start losing power. The banks are also closed, “so there’s no way to access money.”

What’s it like to have Anderson Cooper and Sanjay Gupta suddenly landing in the country’s capital, I asked?

“The whole world is looking at a country that has essentially been ignored,” says Kramer. “Or been the subject of a lot of disinformation. So to have everyone looking at the current crisis without any idea of the history of the country or some of the problems it was facing before the quake, it gives a skewed picture.”

We’ve arranged to talk again in a couple of days.