Requiem for Port-au-Prince

Port-au-Prince before the earthquake, as described by Haitian writers and visitors to the island nation. 

JANUARY 14, 2010

Port-au-Prince bustled. The garden-filled capital city of 3 million was flocked with hills, covered in chalk-white buildings, home to palaces and slums. Tap Taps, the colorful shared taxis, ported citizens through the city, the onomatopoetic name referring to the custom of tapping coins on the side of the cab to stop it. Tourists walked through the Champ de Mars. Tiny fishing vessels filled the bay, cruise ships looming further out. For the first time in decades, Haiti was peaceful and growing, President Réné Préval well-liked internationally and at home, the economy expanding while nearly every other in the Caribbean contracted.

The day before yesterday, a high-magnitude earthquake leveled much of Port-au-Prince. Here is a remembrance of the city -- founded 260 years ago -- in the words of famed residents and visitors, including Langston Hughes, Edwidge Danticat, and former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Rex Hardy Jr./Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

 SUBJECTS:
 

BOREDWELL

8:17 AM ET

January 17, 2010

Island possessed

This is the title of a book on Haiti written by dancer and Guggenheim fellow in anthropology, Dr. Katherine Dunham, published in 1969. It is part cultural treatise but largely, and more importantly, an intimate eye witness account of a person who gradually-gingerly, timidly, daunted at first-chose to participate in every facet of the island's life. Professor Dunham accomplished a rare feat in detailing, aside from their indigenous beliefs and customs, the inner spirit of the people. In reading the book, the reader is given the opportunity to meet the Haitians on their home turf and, if s/he chooses, to understand their incredible endurance, which in spite of centuries of cruel odds, has not diminished. The Haitian people are tough and they are survivors.

 

BOREDWELL

8:19 AM ET

January 17, 2010

Island possessed

This is the title of a book on Haiti written by dancer and Guggenheim fellow in anthropology, Dr. Katherine Dunham, published in 1969. It is part cultural treatise but largely, and more importantly, an intimate eye witness account of a person who gradually-gingerly, timidly, daunted at first-chose to participate in every facet of the island's life. Professor Dunham accomplished a rare feat in detailing, aside from their indigenous beliefs and customs, the inner spirit of the people. In reading the book, the reader is given the opportunity to meet the Haitians on their home turf and, if s/he chooses, to understand their incredible endurance, which in spite of centuries of cruel odds, has not diminished. The Haitian people are tough and they are survivors.