Free Haiti After the Earthquake by Paul Farmer Page B

Haitians pulled together to erect the bridge in a matter of days.
    This remarkable project, as modest as it might seem to engineers, was a reminder that even patchwork coalitions could complete important, lifesaving work. 24 Ophelia Dahl described the bridge in a speech in the fall of 2009, a few days after it was completed:
    One of the areas in which we work is a commune called Boucan Carré, which has a clinic but is cut off for much of the year by a river, a river aptly named fonlanfè (or fond d’enfer —deep hell). This river has
swept away patients who were forced to try to cross it to get help; it has gobbled up jeeps and an ambulance and even cattle being herded across to get to market. Many who have worked there said we must get a bridge. A bridge to cross deep hell to make sure that patients have access to the road so that they don’t bleed to death hoping that the waters recede. You’ll never get a proper bridge built in Haiti, said many. You need heavy equipment and the coordination of the government. You won’t cut through impenetrable red tape, you’ll need resources and engineers and soil experts, and it’ll never happen.
    Six years ago, we started in earnest to bring together groups who could help us, and we went down many a blind alley. We turned to engineering firms here, and when they saw what would be involved, they turned us down. But over time we found new partners: a cell phone corporation, a foundation. We had an engineer from the U.S. raise money and relocate to the village to move things forward. We enlisted a general, the chief of the UN forces, the Haitian government, and even President Clinton had a large role in bringing others into the enterprise. Our colleagues in Haiti added this to their list of jobs: Patrice [Névil], Louise [Ivers], Loune [Viaud], and many others. After six years and many false starts, Haitians were employed to help with the construction and, last week, we got word and pictures that the bridge was finished. It is a strong and handsome structure made more beautiful by its function; not just to provide access across the river but to save lives and transform a community. Together we can build extraordinary public-private partnerships and bring new people together to do whatever it takes to change the way the world works. Of course the bridge is an obvious metaphor for what we do, but so are the waters of hell. And I say if we can build a bridge over hell together, think what we can do for the mortal world. 25
    Getting that bridge up made me believe that our small UN office—which was about nothing so much as building bridges—could get stuff done and on a larger scale. It was modest as a project but potent as a symbol, as were the glittering solar panels atop the Boucan Carré hospital. I wanted others to see that such projects could be accomplished in rural Haiti.

    Less than a month later, I crossed the bridge with one of Clinton’s closest friends, Rolando Gonzalez-Bunster (who runs a large Latin American energy company and donated a big generator to the General Hospital right after the quake). We were again part of a large UN convoy and protected by UN security, which amused my Haitian coworkers. They’d welcomed me to Boucan Carré many times, but never with such an entourage. Thinking of patients lost to flash floods, and even of our ambulance, I crossed the river in what most would consider the correct way: safely, a dozen feet above the rushing water. As I held back tears, I told our first-time guests about the two women who’d died in childbirth stranded on the wrong side of the river. I was pretty sure they were unimpressed by the engineering—why the fuss over such a simple bridge?—but the Brazilian general and my coworkers, Haitian and American and Irish, understood why I was so moved.
    But it was not to be a simple visit: as ever in Haiti, more drama awaited us. A few hundred meters past the bridge,