[LINK] "As death overwhelms Haiti, the spirits go unserved "

[rfmcdonald]

I read once how the sister of one of the victims of Vancouver-area serial killer Robert Pickton wrote how she broke down watching the movie Troy, weeping when she saw King Priam begging for the return of his son's body. Pickton took her body from her family, she realized; she could never be returned, even mourned with any sense of completion. Anna Mehler Paperny's Globe and Mail article describes how Haitians, with their rich spirituality that structures their lives and certainly provides for an afterlife, have been left bereft by their inability to properly bury so very many.

Here religion is everywhere: in convenience stores and lottery booths with names like “Dieu Seule;” in images of Jesus spray-painted on concrete walls and crazily coloured “tap-tap” trucks; in the churches and evangelical schools found on every block even in the most destitute corners of the country.

There are rules about how to bury the dead, how to dress the corpse and when to pray.

Today, death is everywhere in Port-au-Prince. For a people who see each funeral as important and every coffin as unique, the magnitude of an estimated 150,000 deaths is a difficult thing to come to terms with. Not being able to retrieve the bodies of one's loved ones from the ruins is excruciating; finding the dead and being unable to bury them is little better.

[. . .]

That simple fact is a sign of how hard people have been hit. In Haiti, rites such as baptism, communion and a funeral are mandatory markers on life's way. “This is a country of rites of passage,” says Danielle Jeudi, a baptized Catholic and voodoo trainee. “On a moral level, not to be able to do this, it's extremely difficult.”

According to voodoo tradition, the spirit moves on to another life after death. But the ceremonies and prayer are as much for the bereaved as for the dead. “There is so much pain,” Ms. Jeudi says. “Personally, I haven't seen anyone cry. But everyone is mourning their dead. It's obligatory.”

Marie-Ange Bissainthe has been living with her daughters and two other families in a tent at the Pétionville Golf Club since the earthquake struck. It's not bad, she says – and far better than just about any other of the spontaneous settlements that have sprung up – except for the spirits tormenting her children at night.

Everyone knows someone with a story. With his friends' help, Mr. Louis's neighbour, Sergo, managed to unearth his wife and two young children from the rubble of their home. Two more children, however, remain buried. Many of those who do recover the bodies of their loved ones find themselves unable to do anything with them. They can't afford to bury them, and morgues don't have the space to hold them.

For the fortunate, there are funerals – of a sort. Yvane Mesier is doing a booming business selling rum in Port-au-Prince's cemetery. Every afternoon there are funerals here, she says – so many that crypts are often opened up and the coffins removed so new ones can be put in.