In the process of updating Placeblogger's Haitian blog content, I sifted through some pretty powerful stuff.
The media, as can only be expected, reports on a crisis like the Haiti earthquake after the fact. There may be accounts of the "days before" but they are inevitably cast in the shadows of the crisis in the remembering and the retelling. And the news can only be so personal - snapshots of a crying baby and the profile of a man describing the loss of his business are expected and, sadly, easily dismissed.
Blogs and Twitter accounts, as constant diary-like updates of a person's life and surroundings, record life-as-usual before disasters. The difference between a Haitian-based tweet at 10am January 12th and a tweet around 3:30pm is eye-opening.
Go to http://impurple.wordpress.com/ and read the entry "From 16 Year Old Eyes," to see how the quake devastated the life of Haitian teenager Yael Talleyrand. Check her earlier entries on goofy Fridays, the trials of high school, friends, and boys.
Scroll back through the tweets of @RAMhaiti and watch him go from carefree band player and content hotelier to shell-shocked emergency volunteer. People still beg him to find their families.
Watch the footage a Haitian film school began to throw onto their community blog here. http://www.cineinstitute.com/news/
Scroll through the Twitter accounts of @yatalley, @tilionel, @x.mejido, @carelpedre, and @thewritersays. Look at all the cries of solidarity - "We Are One!"
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