“Everyone was crying”: Haitians in mourning bury their dead a week after the earthquake

MARCELINE, Haiti, August 22 (Reuters) – Families gathered this weekend in the villages of southwestern Haiti to celebrate churches and funeral services a week after an earthquake struck the region, causing the killing more than 2,200 people and destroying tens of thousands of buildings.

The collapse of churches in some of the most affected cities and towns in the poor Caribbean nation left residents in grief in the open fields.

In the Roman Catholic church Paroisse Saint-Joseph de Simon, on the outskirts of Les Cayes, a city in the southwest that suffered the weight of the earthquake, about 200 faithful gathered early for the first Sunday Mass since disaster.

“Today everyone was crying over what they had lost,” said priest Marc Orel Saël. “And everyone is stressed because the Earth is still shaking,” he added, referring to the almost daily aftershocks that have shaken his nerves all week.

The quake affected Haiti amid a period of political upheaval following the assassination of President Jovenel Moise last month. Complaints of a report from a local human rights group sparked a new ferment over the weekend.

The National Human Rights Network (RNDDH) report on the assassination of Moise alleged that the new Prime Minister Ariel Henry had spoken on the phone the night of the assassination of one of the main suspects, Joseph Felix Badio .

Jean-Junior Joseph, an aide close to Henry, wrote on Twitter on Saturday afternoon that the prime minister had told him he had “never spoken” to Badio, a former Haitian official. Read more

Last Saturday’s earthquake killed at least 2,207 people. A total of 344 people are missing, while 12,268 people were injured, authorities said. The disaster followed a devastating earthquake in 2010 that killed tens of thousands of people.

Recovery efforts have been hampered by flooding and damage to access roads, fueling tensions in some of the hardest hit areas.

Exasperation over delays in attendance began to boil over in recent days, and residents looted aid trucks in several southern cities, causing safety concerns.

On Sunday evening, the French embassy in Haiti said 40 French rescue workers had arrived, bringing to Les Cayes a water treatment unit that will provide up to 220,000 liters (220 cubic meters) of drinking water a day. .

PAIN

In the village of Marceline, dozens of bad dressed in elegant white or black dresses gathered in front of a dilapidated Catholic school to celebrate a funeral service for four members of the same family who died in the magnitude 7 earthquake. 2.

On Saturday, men and women mourned for the four white coffins – three small for the children and one larger for the matriarch of the family, 90-year-old Marie Rose Morin.

“I’m baffled looking at these coffins,” said Edouard Morin, his son.

Morin was also burying his daughter, Kelly, 15, his niece Wood-Langie, 10, and his nephew Carl-Handy, 4.

“I would feel better if I was buried in the same grave as my mother,” he said.

The four-way funeral cost $ 1,750, a huge sum for farmers in rural areas of a nation where gross domestic product per capita is less than $ 1,200, according to World Bank data.

Franck Morin, Wood-Langie’s father, recalled how he had gone to work as a driver just minutes before the ground began to shake. He rushed back, only to find his wife bleeding from her legs and crying in front of the pile that was once her home.

They both dug among the rubble for two days until they found their daughter’s body.

“She was loved by the whole community, she always danced in church,” Morin said.

Outside another Catholic church overlooking the main park of Les Cayes, dozens of faithful gathered for Sunday Mass in the courtyard adjacent to the ruined cathedral.

“Let us perform the work of the Lord,” the priest chanted as he closed the ceremony.

Report by Laura Gottesdiener; Additional reports from Gessika Thomas in Port-au-Prince; Edited by Dave Graham, Daniel Wallis and Peter Cooney

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