PORT-au-PRINCE: Catherine Bremer, Reuters senior correspondent for Mexico and Central America, described how journalists worked and lived in Haiti after the earthquake: “Tents, satellite receivers, laptops and cables cram the garden of a partly collapsed hotel in Haiti where journalists frantically type, shout into satphones, curse when the generator cuts out and run to the poolside each time an aftershock hits. Hundreds of reporters, photographers and TV crews descended on Haiti after the January 12 earthquake that killed up to 200,000 people in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest state.
“Many wear the same filthy clothes every day, rinse their underwear during a daily three-minute splash in a shared bathroom and sleep well away from walls because of constant aftershocks. Using the cracked hotel’s basement toilets is nerve-wracking. In downtown Port-au-Prince, another damaged hotel sheltering foreign media has no running water, so journalists lather up in the swimming pool in their underwear. Others camp out on the runway at the airport, where they can get better Internet connections with big satellite dishes. They live on crackers, peanut butter or army rations, use putrid toilets and get little sleep as military planes thunder about and aid trucks offload boxes of food aid. ‘The pool has been a boon for us, we’ve all been washing in it. Every morning we stand around and do our ablutions — they just stick a load of chlorine in it each day to clean it,’ said Sky News correspondent Robert Nisbet at the Oloffson hotel.
“Everyone works until they collapse, but they chug beer too — and the French journalists conjure up red wine — to try to wind down from the day’s grim scenes. Haitians pester journalists for water, food and face masks, or offer their services as fixers and drivers. Reporters pay inflated prices, knowing how badly the money is needed.”