Episode 9: Help The Victims in Haiti
Oprah says that Wyclef is the first person to describe this as an apocalypse. She says she’d said to friends that being there must be like being in hell. Wyclef says it’s like the 7th hell- there’s two things- what you see by the airport and then there is the belly of the beast. He says walking into the city feels like walking into a morgue. For every two blocks, there are 15-16 uncovered bodies, 3 are children. People are running holding their babies, while their babies are already dead. The aid workers can’t do much as there are so many people, and they are out of medication, and people want them to help their children but their children are already dead. Wyclef’s cousin used his Flip camera to go inside the belly of the beast.
As the footage rolls, Wyclef narrates. The first thing they heard were bone chilling screams. This is the worst thing they’ve seen in their lives, the whole country is a morgue, everywhere they walk there are bodies in the street. little kids. They spent hours in the heat moving decomposing bodies. The smell is very bad. the local cemetries are already overflowing, so the survivors are ae digging shallow graves. Their team pulled a fourteen year old out of the rubble, the rest of her family are dead.
Watching the footage, Wyclef remembers that every night they heard the Haitian people sing Amazing Grace. The Haitian people know struggle, despite what they are going through they are still chanting and singing the word of God. Oprah says that they have shown over and over that they are resilient people. Wyclef says the only thing they have is their pride.
Oprah observes that Wyclef’s team had masks on, whilst others did not. He says that the media don’t cover on the news the smell of the bodies. It’s raw meat, it’s animal, like a dead dog that no one has taken care of. Oprah asks about his friends and families. He has lost alot of friends. One of his friends was stopped by the police and a building fell on top of them all. It took two days to get his body out. Oprah says that the inital problem was the lack of heavy equipment. Wyclef says that the people who would drive the tractors are buried under rubble. They can not be where they should be, just like the President and his wife are at the airport. We was warned to be strong for he wouldn’t believe what he would see outside the airport.
About the size of Maryland, a two hour flight from the Florida coast lies Haiti, on the west end of a Carribean island- on the east is the wealthy Dominican Republic.In contrast, Haiti is home to the poorest citizens in the Western Hemisphere. Haiti is the only country on earth which gained independence by a slave rebellion. 9 million people speak two languages- French and Creole. 95% are of African descent. Civil war, violence, famine, corruption, war and countless disasters have wreaked havoc on Haiti but it was felt that Haiti was on a path to success. Bill Clinton said anyone who has seriously followed Haiti for a long time would say that it has the best chance now to break the chains of its lifetime and build a truly modern state. Amazingly the statue of a free slave, which signifies Haiti’s spirit is still standing.
Wyclef was 9 when his family left Haiti and came to the US. He dreamed of making it big in the music business, and both as a member of the Fugees and with his solo career he has been very successful. His passion in life is to get the rest of the world to care about Haiti as much as he does. It is his mission from God, he wants to make a serious dent with his Foundation, a school for young artists in Haiti. On Wednesday, the school was flattened with no survivors. It was in the Jacmel area, which is not talked about much in the news; it is 80% devastated. He and his wife have been trying to help Haiti for a long time- Wyclef says he went from being an ant to a gorilla overnight. Oprah says there has been alot of focus on the non-filing of taxes up until 2009 with his Foundation. He says in 1996 when he did the Grammys he wore a Haiti flag; therefore his pariotism cant be questioned. He says starting a foundation needs the right people around you. Being Haitian, a foundation needs logisitics; helicopters and trucks. No one was focused on the Foundation until they noticed that they raise $1 million a day. A lot of eyebrows were raised, as they are the youngest NGO on the ground. He put his first million into the charity, he has never taken any form of payment from the charity. Oprah says she has 3 foundations and comes under a lot of scrutiny, she says the IRS lives here. She says you need the right people who know the tax laws, was he let down by his people? He says it was poorly ran and moving forward they’ll be stronger than ever. The crown applaud.
Oprah says she heard Wyclef say there should be an exodus from Port-au-Prince, but where would the people go? Wyclef says there are places outside the capital where the US army could set up tents outside of the capital. He wants the tents to be built into communities in the future; we don’t want refugee camps. On Friday Wyclef joins George Clooney and a huge host of stars, for Hope For Haiti Now, a television event, with all proceeds going to Haiti. He’s going back to Haiti on Saturday because the food is being thrown down by helicopter, and he wants them to know that the Haitian people are not animals. He’s going to work on logisitics to distribute food and water more effectively.
Aids, malnutirition and poverty have ravaged Haiti- half of the population is under 18. 300,00 children were orphans before the earthquakes. Parents who can no longer feed children send them to be slaves in wealtheir homes where they are often abused. Tens of thousands of children live on the street eating dirt to surive, just hundreds of miles from our shores.
Rihanna is one of the stars performing for the Hope for Haiti Now TV event on Friday. She’ll be singing with JayZ and Bono. She says, we need your help, everyone should tune in. Today she will sing Bob Marley’s Redemption Song as it is so liberating. She played it as a child when times were difficult, and she still plays it now when her back is up against the wall. She feels the people of Haiti need to hear something uplifting. She sings the song, while images from Haiti are displayed behind her. Oprah gives Rihanna a hug. For the next 48 hours you can download this song, go to Oprah.com to find out how. All the proceeds will go to Haiti. Rihanna’s new album is called Rated R.
Neurosurgeon and CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr Sanjay Gupta filed some of the first reports out of Haiti. We see footage of a fifteen day old baby with a head injury who needed a doctor. She has a laceration and a fracture, but she’ll be ok. Reports of violence led Belgian doctors to evacuate the Field Hospital, leaving Dr Gupta the only person to care for 25 people overnight. A few days ago, the US military evacuated Dr Gupta out of Haiti to an aircraft carrier several miles off shore. The earthquake had embedded concrete in a 12 year old girls brain- Dr Gupta performed a ninety minute emergency surgery and saved the girls life.
In the studio, Oprah welcomes Dr Gupta via satellite from Port au-Prince. She thanks him and asks about this mornings aftershock. He says it was quite scary, behind him tents have been set up behind him- people are fearful to go back inside buildings with the continued aftershocks. The roads are a disaster, there are piles of rubble everywhere. He says it is hard to imagine how it will all get cleaned up. 6.1 and 5.2 are aftershocks in Haiti, but by any standards they are real earthquakes. They will have to test for trauma to buildings, but the emotional anxiety is very high here. Oprah says she is sure the fear and anxiety level are growing, The most pressing medical problem now, according to Dr Gupta, is that although many people died, many now are barely alive. They have preventable deaths, like crushed limbs. They are walking the streets having kidney failure and heart problems. In any other situation, these injuries are easily treated. 8 days out, these things are not happening, The problem now is distribution- the supplies are at the airports, but the supplies are not getting out where they are needed. In medical emergencies you count time in minutes and hours. So far it has been 8 days…
So many reporters are saying that this is the worst tragedy they have ever seen, worse even than Hurricane Katrina. Dr Gupta says this is the worst because Haiti is one of the most impoverished countries, there is no medical structure and they have one of the worst patient to doctor ratios in the world. From this point, there are infinitely more people needing medical care and infinitely less medical structure. In Katrina, people mainly lived or died, what they needed was food and water. In Haiti the people who lived have catastrophic injuries. They need someone on the ground to oversee the infrastructure. The security concerns are huge, there are soldiers and security there, but doctors are having problems getting in. The problems dovetail, solve the medical problems and the security issues will ease.
Thanks to Dr Gupta. Wyclef is willing to go to Haiti, he needs a taskforce, he knows Haiti. He will be in charge of distribution from the airport to the people of Haiti. He says the need for security will decrease if the medical situation improves.
Giving hope to Haiti is near and dear to singer Maxwell’s heart. He was raised by his Haitian grandmother. He is excited to help the great people of Haiti, today he will sing Fistful of Tears. He sings with images from Haiti playing behind him. Maxwell sings and cries. Oprah hugs him. For the next 48 hours you can download this song from Oprah.com, with all proceeds going to Haiti.
Oprah says they are here to encourage us to watch Hope for Haiti on Friday, it will play on all channels. Maxwell has been devastated by the tragedy. he doesn’t know fully how it feels for others like Wyclef who have lost so many people dear to them. He says “As someone who is you know, you know, my heritage is from there on some level”, he hopes he can stand as a beacon of hope for the Haitians to see there is more than this devastation, that you can grab onto something alot more tighter and secure than what Haiti has been holding on to for the last 200 years. Rihanna says she she goes to bed thinking of the orphans- the children suffer most and they had almost 400,000 orphans before this. The children are hungry and hopeless, they are the next generation, the chidren are our future. Rhianna and her Foundation are helping to rebuild Haiti. After survival, there is so much more to be done. Wyclef tells the Haitians to have unity and strength. The Haitian people told him to say on the show that they don’t need any more photo-ops, what they need is logistics, people to go to the airport and get the stuff out of the airport and to the people. The crowd applauds.
Rhianna and Maxwell donate the proceeds from the downloads of their songs from Oprah.com to Haiti. Watch the benefit on Friday. Thanks.
WHAT WE LEARNED TODAY:
Wyclef Jean is the most famous person from Haiti, he has a mission from God to help the rest of the world care about Haiti as much as he does
Haiti today is apocalyptic, like the 7th hell
Wyclef Jean would like to manage the distribution of supplies from the airport to the people of Haiti; he will need a taskforce
This tragedy is worse than any other, because those who lived are dying from their injuries, which should be preventable deaths
Celebrities are helping as much as they can, there is a huge benefit on all channels on Friday night
A VERY QUICK SUMMARY:
Haiti needs a new infrastructure to end their apocalypse. Wyclef Jean is on a mission from God