‘Things are moving rather slowly’

Carel @ The Shorty Awards- Photo by taishimizu.com

Along with other tweeters, Carel was also sending digital photos of the destruction caused by the quake. Many of the images appeared in mainstream newspapers and on TV channels shortly afterwards.

Earlier this month, he picked up a Special Award at the “Shorties” in New York. The annual event honours the best producers of short, real-time content. He was also nominated in the best Innovation on Twitter category.

At the United Nations, international donors pledged more than $5bn in financial aid for Haiti’s recovery.

Below, Carel Pedre gives World News America his assessment on how far his home country has come since that devastating day.

It has been three months and yet it seems like three weeks. Things are moving rather slowly from what I’ve seen. People are still living in the streets; many of them have no shelter, no tents, no living spaces. And when it rains it is catastrophic.

I am an ordinary person but at the same time I still have a job, I have my house, my family is safe, I am going about town normally. But for those that I pass on the streets of Champs de Mars still stranded in front of our National Palace, I can’t imagine how they are feeling, all I know is that they are surviving not living.It is sad to say that on our side, we still haven’t seen what the government is doing, or has been doing. And though we hear and see so many international organisations working towards rebuilding, truly we don’t see the work yet.

Still now I can’t believe that I have lived through any of these things and have seen what I have seen. It was a regular day, the country was preparing for carnival, we had just started celebrating our new year, spirits were high and the last thing on anyone’s mind was an earthquake.

Growing up in Port de Paix (northwest Haiti), I had felt an earthquake before, so I thought this was the same. Nothing out of the ordinary, I was driving in my car, I continued to drive and it was not until I saw people who were hurt passing me by and seeing houses that had collapsed that I realised this was at a whole other level.

My first reactions were fear, concern, frustration. Was my family safe? Would my house collapse? Was the world coming to an end? But as it happened I also had the first instinct to get on my phone and Tweet “Am I the only one who felt that?”

Then as I looked around and witnessed the devastation I quickly tried to find my daughter’s whereabouts. I parked the car at the radio station, and I walked a mile and a half to my house to make sure she was fine then I walked right back to the radio station in the midst of it all because we still had power and were able to keep broadcasting.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/8597682.stm

Published: 2010/03/31 16:33:59 GMT

© BBC MMX