Print edition: 
Even before its catastrophic earthquake two years ago, Haiti was a place of such hellish poverty and corruption that people on the outside often turned away because it was all too much, too sad, too hopeless.
The 7.0 earthquake was freakishly fierce for that part of the Caribbean, and it seemed to be almost a preternatural act of cruelty. No country in the hemisphere was more vulnerable and ill-prepared. Still, the devastation was shocking.
Eventually the number of fatalities surpassed 300,000 – a mind-blowing figure almost 20 times higher than the death toll from last year’s Japanese earthquake and tsunami. For a few weeks, the world took notice. Volunteers arrived by the planeload in Port-au-Prince, and supplies poured in along with money.
Two years later, the question is: How is Haiti?
Of course it’s still poor, still in desperate need of jobs, competent political leadership and decent housing. More than half a million Haitians left homeless by the quake still live in tent cities, and a cholera outbreak a year ago killed more than 4,000, including many children.
This month brought peaceful street demonstrations by those exasperated with the slow pace of rebuilding and the lack of work. Sadly, Haiti has no history of efficient governance and no template to work from.
The Interim Haiti Recovery Commission is in limbo, because the Haitian Parliament has balked at extending its legal mandate. More than $2 billion in aid committed by other nations remains uncollected and unspent. Not surprisingly, donor nations are directing most funds toward established relief agencies and private contractors rather than the government ministries, which have a notorious legacy of waste, neglect and outright theft.
Throughout the long recovery, celebrities have popped in and out of the country. If nothing else, such fleeting though well-publicized appearances serve to remind distracted segments of the world public that Haiti is still there, still hanging on.
Others are in it for the long haul.
A musician friend has quietly funded a new grade school in the countryside. Actor Sean Penn arrived in Port-au-Prince shortly after the earthquake and was so overwhelmed that he’s been a fixture ever since. He manages a tent camp for 55,000 people who lost their homes in the disaster.
Paul Farmer, whose intrepid Partners in Health organization has been operating medical clinics for years in Haiti, recently described plans for a 320-bed teaching hospital – the country’s largest. When finished, the earthquake-proof facility will treat about 500 patients a day. Given the scarcity of good health care in Haiti, this is nothing short of a godsend.
Then there’s former President Clinton, whose interest in Haiti also predates the earthquake, and who has surely spent more street time there than any American political figure past or present. He returned again this month to mark the anniversary of the tragedy by visiting a Timberland shoe factory in an industrial park where about 7,000 Haitians are employed. Clinton has been relentlessly pushing for more foreign investment in Haiti’s private sector, which is its only true hope for moving forward.
Two years is hardly enough time to erase a century of ruinous policies, but there is something happening that resembles progress. For example, more people in Port-au-Prince can now get clean water than before the quake.
A new hospital here, a new factory there – these are small miracles, but they must be multiplied for Haiti to lift itself from the rubble of 2010.
