Dominican angels visited Haiti after the earthquake

When you search news about Haitian-Dominican relations, you often find mostly bad press: immigration problems, stories of racism and bad treatment of Haitians.  But, with the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12, I saw something completely different.

After the earthquake, President Fernandez of the Dominican Republic was the first to pay a visit to the Haitian President, and Dominican rescuers were the first to be on the ground.  Also, in the ICT sector, INDOTEL, the Dominican telecom regulator, has been very active in helping maintaining communications in the country.  Of course, one would say, they are our neighbors; they are closest to us than any other country, and most of our international routes for the Internet go through the DR anyway.  But, they could have been indifferent.  How many times have you been in trouble and your closest neighbor is not necessarily the first one to offer help?  In fact, all of this was just the tip of the iceberg; that’s what was the most visible, and I would like to share my personal experience to show how deep and sincere the help of Dominicans were in the crisis.

My close family was luckily safe after the earthquake, but my wife’s family was not that lucky.  Among the survivors, a 5-year old boy, Sam, my wife’s nephew, was badly injured in the head.  His 11-year sister did not make it…  The hospitals that were not destroyed were overwhelmed with the number of casualties, and it was impossible to even get in touch with a neurologist, let alone to find a working “cat scan” to examine the kid.  While visiting and trying different hospitals and ad hoc clinics, I also asked for help through mailing lists, and through the CIVIC community, and the response from my Dominican friends was overwhelming.

Finally, I had the option to drive to the border and hand the kid to a group that would transport him to a hospital in Santo Domingo.  As I was about to hit the road at 7h00PM in the night, I got a call saying that a private plane was coming to get us at 9:00PM at the airport to take us to Santiago, in the DR (I learned afterwards that he might have not survived if we had taken the road with him).

The plane was one of Estrella, a Dominican construction company that is actually building roads in Haiti.  I felt privileged to have this opportunity, since this pickup was arranged by my father-in-law.  Ambulances were waiting for Sam at the Santiago airport; he was quickly transported to the hospital and his life was saved.  But, what I found out later is that this plane has been going back and forth between Port-au-Prince and Santiago, taking injured kids to hospitals.  Nobody had asked them to do it.  They were just helping.

My wife and I took the opportunity to visit the traumatized Haitian kids in the Homs hospital in Santiago, helping with translation, etc.  During our stay there, Dominican families came to visit, bringing clothes and toys for the kids.  Almost every Dominican we met while we were there showed real compassion and offered help in some way, from the taxi driver, the hair doer, to Estrella staff members who also came to visit.  While leaving the DR to the USA, we even almost missed our flight because the immigration officer kept talking with us to explain how affected he was by the tragedy and how the stories about hatred between Dominicans and Haitians are individual, isolated problems that some people are manipulating for other reasons.  That was his words.

Personally, I have always wished and I worked for more cooperation between Haitians and Dominicans.  In the ICT sector, I worked with many Dominicans and on several projects, and I always thought that the situation was not as bad as it was reported in the news.  I think that the earthquake showed how much compassion the Dominican people have, and that this compassion is mainstream.  I didn’t even talk about the fact that on all TV networks I witnessed fundraising activities for Haiti, and that Dominicans even donated blood to help Haitian victims.  We need to build on that, and not on the politically-motivated discourses.

Sam is still in Santiago with his mom and dad, and he is fine.  I wanted to write this because I think that Dominicans did not get enough recognition for their help compared with the coverage that other nations got during the earthquake.  Also, I wanted to publicly thank Estrella, a company that gave a new meaning to the social corporate responsibility concept.