Part II: A Mass Grave (Feb. 3rd - 5th)

 

 Mike and I sat on a high mountain which gave us a vantage to see all of Port au Prince. From that height the general earthquake damage was barely perceptible. While scanning the city and trying to place the various sites I had visited, I saw a circular depression with small tightly packed structures within the boundaries of the circle. Phillip informed me this is the main cemetery for Port au Prince. We decide to go and see it.

There are men waiting outside the cemetery who will act as a personal guide for mass graves, burnt bodies, and voodoo ritual sites, for a small penance. A sparse man in his fifties, with a white shirt and a straw fedora, comes over to us and offers us his services for twenty U.S.  Mike and I consult with Phillip, and he says this is a rip off. We offer the man five, and he accepts without complaint or counteroffer.

The old guide holds a bible still wrapped in its original plastic in one hand, and in the other, a white handkerchief which he occasionally uses to cover his face from the stench of decomposing flesh. The passage by which we enter the cemetery takes us over a small bridge spanning a concrete river that runs just along the cemetery’s wall. The guide walks ahead of us, and with his Bible and handkerchief ushers us across the bridge with slightly outstretched arms.  There is something almost ceremonial in the way he guides us, as if he is officiating our passage to someplace sacred. He is our own personal Charon.

Above-ground tombs and crypts cram the cemetery at some points as high as fifteen feet. This labyrinth of death is solemn, and full of ritualistic signs of activities associated with death in Haiti: candles, crosses, voodoo anagrams, and fake flowers. More ominous symbols tell of the recent earthquake: tombs and crypts stand ruptured with their skeletal contents exposed or strewn about the ground--the earthquake was so violent that it woke the dead as it were; oblong piles of ashes mark where bodies had been burned; an old pile of age stained bones lay in a neat pile with a Yorick like skull stacked on top. 

 

We continued on, and with many lefts and rights, finally arrive at a mass grave. The cemetery wall had been breached. It was unclear if the break in the wall was caused by the earthquake or man made, but in either case, a large ditch had been made just inside the cemetery. It was perhaps twenty feet across. It was entirely covered over by rubble, dirt, and trash. Only the putrid smell of rotting flesh announced the sad fact of so many buried bodies. I climbed up on some tombs to get a better perspective of the scene. An odd curiosity grabs me and I wonder what would happen if I jumped on the pile. Would I sink in, or would the pile hold my weight? There is not much to take a photograph of. The sun is high, and far from the type of light that could turn the scene into a photograph.

 

Something like this is going through my head: I’m alive, and I’m photographing death. In fact, aside from a few bones, and greasy scraps of yellowed skin, death is hidden from my lens and buried under a pile of rubble. It is here that I realize finally, that I will not be taking pictures like the ones I saw on the New York Times Lens Blog, or like Nachtwey’s, or Haviv’s, or Winter's. I had to accept my situation, which was that  the story was not about death anymore, and it never was.

Was I disappointed? Hell yes. It’s easy to photograph death. Now, it meant the job wasn’t going to be a fast one. My anxiety and fear wanted it to be quick. I wanted to get sexy drama and get the hell out. I wanted to fly home right away, or maybe just die. But I came to that point in a situation where I had to grow up in it, get real, overcome all of that, and reach out to the living, to the survivors, and find the real story.

It meant that I had to get out of my car, and talk to people. Do you know how hard that is? In doing so, you have to deal with all of it, and especially the parts of the situation that you fear the most. You must talk to people, and deal with their anger, and their grief, and their pain, because you are a reporter, and you’re the one asking questions. You are not just seeing, hearing, and feeling, but you are seeing, hearing, and feeling for your audience, too. An audience--though certainly concerned--who is altogether detached from the situation. You are alone in this. You’re practically from a different planet. How can you handle it without totally shutting down? It’s done with complete obedience to the fact that you must shoulder the consequences of human emotions which have been shattered by an earthquake. If the people are angry at you, than you must apologize, even if you have not done anything. If the people are sad, then you must be sad with them. If someone has fallen, then you must stop taking photographs, set your camera aside, and help that person up.